Machen, Arthur [Llewellyn Jones] (1863–1947).
Welsh author of horror stories, journalist, autobiographer. Machen gained early notoriety for “The Great God Pan” (1890; collected in The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light[1894]), The Three Impostors(1895), and other works that were accused of being the outpourings of a diseased and licentious imagination. HPL discovered Machen in late spring 1923, evidently at the urging of Frank Belknap Long (see SL1.250); at that time HPL actually considered Machen “the greatest living author” ( SL1.234). Machen was temperamentally very different from HPL: an Anglo-Catholic and mystic, he bitterly resented the increasing authority of science over human affairs. HPL’s “The Dunwich Horror” seems clearly a borrowing of the central idea of “The Great God Pan” (a god impregnating a human being), while that of “Cool Air” is (by HPL’s own admission) derived in part from “Novel of the White Powder” (a segment in The Three Impostors). “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” owe something to “Novel of the Black Seal” in the same volume, which conveys horror by the “documentary approach” of slow and me
< previous page page_161 next page > < previous page page_162 next page >
Page 162
ticulous accumulation of physical evidence. HPL also appreciated the sensitive aesthetic novel The Hill of Dreams(1907) and the short horror novel The Terror(1917), as well as Machen’s autobiographies, Far Off Things(1922), Things Near and Far(1923), and The London Adventure (1924), which speak poignantly of his impoverished life in London and his walks around that city. “The Unnamable” (1923) may reflect Machen’s critical theories as expressed in Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature(1902). HPL also read Machen’s late novel, The Green Round(1933), but found it disappointingly vague and unfocused. Machen’s best short tales are collected in The House of Souls(1906), which contains “The White People,” considered by HPL the second greatest weird tale in all literature; see also Tales of Horror and the Supernatural(1948).
See Wesley D.Sweetser, Arthur Machen(1964); S.T.Joshi, “Arthur Machen: The Mystery of the Universe,” in The Weird Tale(1990); Mark Valentine, Arthur Machen(1995).
Mackenzie, Robert B.F.
In “The Shadow out of Time,” the mining engineer who points out to Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee that the scenes Peaslee describes from his disturbing dreams match exactly those found in the Great Sandy Desert in Australia. Mackenzie meets Peaslee in Arkham to plan an expedition to explore the Australian ruins.
Malkowski, Dr.
In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” a physician in Arkham who attends to Walter Gilman during the latter’s final days.
Malone, Thomas F.
In “The Horror at Red Hook,” a New York police detective who follows the case of Robert Suydam. The case proves so unsettling that he must take a leave of absence in Pascoag, R.I. “Man of Stone, The.”
Short story (6,460 words); ghostwritten for Hazel Heald, probably in summer 1932. First published in Wonder Stories(October 1932); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in HM Daniel “Mad Dan” Morris finds in his ancestral copy of the Book of Eibona formula to turn any living creature into a stone statue. Morris admits that the formula “depends more on plain chemistry than on the Outer Powers” and that “What it amounts to is a kind of petrification infinitely speeded up.” He successfully turns the trick on Arthur Wheeler, a sculptor who he believes had been making overtures to his wife Rose. He then attempts the same procedure on Rose herself, locking her in the attic and feeding her large amounts of salty meat along with water containing the solution; but she secretly manages to catch rain water from the window and does not drink the water. When Morris is asleep, Rose forces the lock on her door, ties up her husband in his chair (using the same whip with which he had repeatedly beaten her), and, with a funnel, forces him to drink his own solution. He is turned into stone. Rose, weakened and depressed over Wheeler’s death, then takes the solution herself. Morris’s diary, with a final entry by Rose, is found later by two visitors to the remote cabin. In a letter to August Derleth (September 30, 1944), Heald wrote: “Lovecraft helped me on this story as much as on the others, and did actually rewrite para
< previous page page_162 next page > < previous page page_163 next page >
Page 163
graphs. He would criticize paragraph after paragraph and pencil remarks beside them, and then make me write them until they pleased him” (note in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions [1970 ed.], p. 27). This would seem to suggest that HPL revised a draft by Heald, but the evidence indicates that he wrote the entire text himself, presumably from her plot outline. The story appears to be the first of the five Heald revisions.
Manly, Jack.
In “Sweet Ermengarde,” a handsome but impoverished young man who hopes to marry Ermengarde Stubbs. He seeks a fortune in the city, but in the end his quest for Ermengarde’s hand is unsuccessful.
Manton, Joel.
In “The Unnamable,” the principal of East High School and a believer in “old wives’ superstitions” although skeptical of the existence of anything so horrible as to be “unnamable.” At the end of the tale he learns differently. Manton is based on HPL’s colleague, the high school teacher and amateur journalist Maurice W.Moe.
Marcia.
In “Poetry and the Gods,” a dreamy young woman who writes free verse and later encounters the Greek gods and the shades of several of the great poets of the world.
Marigny, Etienne-Laurent de.
In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” the “distinguished Creole student” of Eastern antiquities, who served with Randolph Carter in the French Foreign Legion and is one of the four individuals who attempt to settle Carter’s estate. Carter had named de Marigny his executor. De Marigny is also mentioned as the author of a scholarly article published in The Occult Reviewin “Out of the Æons” (Heald) concerning the hieroglyphics on the mysterious cylinder. He is loosely modeled after HPL’s collaborator on the story, E.Hoffmann Price.