In Defence of Dagon.
Collective title for a series of three essays: “The Defence Reopens!” (3,820 words; January 1921); “The Defence Remains Open!” (5,980 words; April 1921); and “Final Words” (2,100 words; September 1921). First published in its entirety in In Defence of Dagon(Necronomicon Press, 1985). Brief excerpts from the first two essays appeared as “In Defense of Dagon,” Leaves(1938).
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The essays were written in response to comments on HPL’s poems and stories submitted to the Transatlantic Circulator, an Anglo-American organization of amateur journalists who circulated their work in manuscript and commented on it. The essays present a strong defense of HPL’s brand of weird fiction (the weird writer is “the poet of twilight visions and childhood memories, but sings only for the sensitive”), calling upon Oscar Wilde’s critical theories to combat the notion that weird art (or any art) can be “morbid” or “unhealthy.” HPL also vigorously defends his atheistic materialism (first expressed in a letter or essay that does not now survive), maintaining that religion has been largely disproven by the sciences of physics and biology and that anthropology has accounted for the origin of religious belief. Many comments by other members of the Circulator (which included John Ravenor Bullen, who was perhaps responsible for HPL’s entry into the group) survive at JHL. “In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard.”
Essay (1,580 words); written in June or July 1936. First published in Fantasy Magazine(September 1936); rpt. MW
Poignant overview of Howard’s life and work, written shortly after his suicide. The essay is based largely on a letter to E.Hoffmann Price (July 5, 1936). A shorter version (probably written first) appeared as “Robert Ervin Howard: 1906–1936” ( Phantagraph,August 1936). HPL also wrote a letter to WTon Howard’s death (published in the letter column in October 1936).
“In the Editor’s Study.”
A regular column of commentary in issues of the Conservative(1916–23); rpt. The Conservative: Complete(Necronomicon Press, 1976, 1977).
The column appeared in seven issues of the paper. In October 1916 there were three subsections: “The Proposed Author’s Union” (a satirical squib on unionization of authors); “Revolutionary Mythology” (on extravagant praise of the heroes of the American Revolution); and “The Symphonic Ideal” (on the need to remain “childlike and contented” in the modern age). In January 1917 there were two subsections: “The Vers Libre Epidemic” (an attack on free verse) and “Amateur Standards” (on a political feud in the UAPA). In July 1917 there was one subsection: “A Remarkable Document” (on a temperance article by Booth Tarkington). In July 1918 there were six subsections: “AngloSaxondom” (on the need for America and Great Britain to unite against immigrants); “Amateur Criticism” (on the criticism of amateur writing; specifically directed at Prof. Philip B.McDonald); “The United 1917–1918” (on the accomplishments of the UAPA during the past year); “The Amateur Press Club” (on a new international organization of amateur journalists); “Ward Phillips Replies” (a paragraph prefacing HPL’s poem “Grace,” responding to a poem written by Rheinhart Kleiner); and “Les Mouches Fantastiques”(on a literarily radical amateur journal edited by Elsa Gidlow and Roswell George Mills). In July 1919 there was one subsection: “The League” (a jaundiced look at the inability of the League of Nations to stop war). In March 1923 there were two subsections: “Rursus Adsumus” (on HPL’s revival of the Conservative) and “Rudis Indigestaque Moles” (a condemnation of the literary radicalism of T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land). In
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July 1923 the column appeared without any subsections, discussing the need to take cognizance of recent developments in art and philosophy.
“In the Vault.”
Short story (3,430 words); written on September 18, 1925. First published in Tryout(November 1925); rpt. WT(April 1932); first collected in O;corrected text in DH
George Birch is the careless and thick-skinned undertaker of Peck Valley, somewhere in New England. He finds himself trapped in the cemetery’s receiving tomb where eight coffins are being stored for the winter by the slamming of the door in the wind and the breaking of the neglected latch. Birch realizes that the only way to escape the tomb is to pile the coffins like a pyramid and squeeze through the transom. Although working in the dark, he is confident that he has stacked the coffins in the sturdiest manner possible; in particular, he believes that he has placed the well-made coffin of the diminutive Matthew Fenner on the very top, rather than the flimsy coffin initially built for Fenner but later used for the tall Asaph Sawyer, a vindictive man whom he had not liked in life. Ascending his “miniature Tower of Babel,” Birch finds that he has to knock out some of the bricks around the transom in order for his large body to escape. As he does so, his feet fall through the top coffin into the decaying contents within. He feels horrible pains in his ankles—as from splinters or loose nails—but manages to crawl out the window and drop to the ground. He cannot walk—his Achilles tendons have been cut—but drags himself to the cemetery lodge where he is rescued. Later Dr. Davis examines his wounds and finds them very unnerving. Going to the receiving-tomb, he learns the truth: Asaph Sawyer was too big to fit Fenner’s coffin, so Birch had phlegmatically cut off Sawyer’s feet at the ankles to make the body fit; but he had not reckoned on Sawyer’s inhuman vengeance. The top coffin was not Fenner’s but Sawyer’s, and the wounds in Birch’s ankles are teeth marks.
The plot of the story was suggested to HPL sometime in August 1925 by C.W. Smith, editor of Tryout . It is spelled out in a letter: “…an undertaker imprisoned in a village vault where he was removing winter coffins for spring burial, & his escape by enlarging a transom reached by the pilingup of the coffins” ( SL2.26). HPL has, of course, added a supernatural element. But the story remains a commonplace tale of supernatural vengeance. As in “Pickman’s Model,” HPL attempts unsuccessfully to write in a more homespun, colloquial vein.
HPL dedicated the story to C.W.Smith, “from whose suggestion the central situation is taken.” HPL submitted it to Farnsworth Wright of WT,but it was rejected in November 1925; Wright gave as a reason the fact that (in HPL’s words) “its extreme gruesomeness would not pass the Indiana censorship” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, December 2, 1925; ms., JHL). The reference is to the banning of C.M. Eddy’s “The Loved Dead.” HPL then sent it to the Tryout,where it appeared in the issue for November 1925 (the issue was published in early December). Later, in August 1926, the story was submitted to Ghost Stories,a very crude pulp magazine that specialized in purportedly “true” confession-style stories involving the supernatural; possibly HPL felt that the plain style of the tale would pass muster with the editors, but it was rejected. Finally, in late 1931, after August Derleth prepared a new typescript to replace HPL’s tattered original, HPL resubmitted the story to WTat Derleth’s urging. It was accepted, and HPL was paid $55.