Then, in the summer of 1916, Denis’s longtime friend Frank Marsh, a painter, comes to visit the de Russys. He wishes to paint Marceline, thinking that her exoticism will revive him from the aesthetic rut in which he finds himself.
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He begins the portrait, but tensions rise as Denis believes that Marsh and Marceline are having an affair behind his back. To relieve the situation, Antoine contrives to send Denis to New York to attend his business affairs; but he is disturbed when he overhears Marceline clearly trying to seduce Marsh, who resists her advances.
At last Marsh’s painting is done, but horror is in the offing. Antoine awakes one day to find Marceline in a pool of her own blood, her long, luxurious hair hacked off. Marsh must be the culprit; but when Antoine follows a bloody trail to an upstairs room, he finds Marsh dead, with his son Denis crouching next to him, “a tousled, wild-eyed thing.” Denis maintains that he killed Marceline because “she was the devil—the summit and high-priestess of all evil.” He had come back home because he continued to suspect that Marsh and Marceline were lovers; but as he saw Frank’s painting, he realized that Marsh was trying to warn him about his wife, conveying by means of his painting that she was a “leopardess, or gorgon, or lamia.” After he had killed Marceline, her hair continued to exhibit signs of animation, and as he hacked off her hair it wrapped itself around Marsh and choked him to death. After telling his tale to his father, Denis dies.
Antoine buries the bodies of Marsh (with Marceline’s coils still around him), Marceline, and his son in the cellar. He has, however, preserved Marsh’s painting, and reluctantly he takes the traveler up to the room where it is kept. As the two are looking at it, the strands of hair begin to lift themselves from the painting and seem about to strike Antoine. The traveler draws out his automatic and shoots the painting, but Antoine curses at the traveler: the painting has to be kept intact, otherwise Marceline and her coils will revive and come out of their grave. Sounds from the basement seem to confirm that this is happening, so the two men flee; the house in any event is ablaze from a candle that Antoine had dropped in the studio. The traveler makes it to his car, but he sees Antoine overtaken by a “bald, naked figure,” and also dimly perceives some large snake-like form among the tall weeds and bushes. As he drives to the nearest town, he learns that the de Russy mansion had in fact burned down five or six years ago. The traveler then informs us of the ultimate horror of the matter: Marceline was, “though in deceitfully slight proportion,” a negress.
Notes for the story survive (in AHT), including both a plot outline and a “Manner of Narration” (a synopsis of events in order of narration); here too it is made clear that the final racist revelation —“woman revealed as vampire, lamia, &c. &c.—& unmistakably (surprise to reader as in original tale) a negress”—is meant to be the culminating horror of the tale. The mention here of an “original tale” may suggest that there was a draft of some kind by Bishop, but if so, it does not survive. WTrejected the story. Later in 1930 HPL discussed with Frank Belknap Long (Bishop’s agent) the possibility of sending it to Ghost Stories(HPL to Frank Belknap Long, [November 1930]; AHT), but if it was sent there, it was again rejected. As with “The Mound,” the tale was heavily altered and rewritten by August Derleth for its magazine appearance, and he continued to reprint the adulterated texts in book form until the corrected text appeared in 1989.
See Marc A.Cerasini, “Dark Passion: ‘Medusa’s Coil’ and ‘Black Canaan,’” CryptNo. 11 (Candlemas 1983): 33–36.
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“Memory.”
Prose poem (350 words); probably written in the spring of 1919. First published in the United Cooperative(June 1919), an amateur journal coedited by HPL, Winifred Jackson, and others. First collected in BWS;corrected text in MW
A Daemon of the Valley holds a colloquy with “the Genie that haunts the moonbeams” about the previous inhabitants of the valley of Nis, through which the river Than flows. The Genie has forgotten these creatures, but the Daemon declares: “I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, for it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.”
Poe’s influence dominates this very short work: there is a Demon in Poe’s “Silence—a Fable”; “the valley Nis” is mentioned in Poe’s “The Valley of Unrest” (whose original title was “The Valley Nis,” although HPL may not have been aware of the fact); and “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” which features a dialogue like that of HPL’s tale, speaks of the destruction of all earth life by means of a fire caused by a comet passing near the earth.
See Lance Arney, “The Extinction of Mankind in the Prose Poem ‘Memory,’” LSNo. 21 (Spring 1990): 38–39.
Menes.
In “The Cats of Ulthar,” the little boy whose kitten disappears following the arrival of “dark wanderers” in Ulthar. He elicits supernatural intervention in exacting vengeance for the loss of his kitten.
Merritt, A[braham] (1884–1943).
American author and longtime editor of American Weekly(the magazine supplement to the Hearst papers). HPL considered the novelette “The Moon Pool” ( Argosy,June 22, 1918) one of the ten best weird tales in literature; he disliked the later novel version ( The Moon Pool,1919), and came to believe that Merritt sold himself out to the pulps when he could have been the equal of Machen and Blackwood as a weird writer. Some images in “The Moon Pool,” as well as the setting on Ponape, may have influenced “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926). The Dwellers in the Mirage(1932) may be a homage to HPL in its use of extra-dimensional octopus demon Khalk’ru (an analogue to Cthulhu?). Other novels: The Metal Monster(serialized 1920; book form 1946), The Ship of Ishtar(serialized 1924; book form 1926), Seven Footprints to Satan(serialized 1927; book form 1928), The Face in the Abyss(1931), Burn, Witch, Burn!(serialized 1932; book form 1933), Creep, Shadow!(1934). The Fox Woman(1949) is a short story collection. HPL met Merritt in New York on January 8, 1934, when Merritt took HPL to dinner at the Players Club in Gramercy Park. At that time HPL noted: “He knows all about my work, & praises it encouragingly” (HPL to Annie E.P.Gamwell, [January 8, 1934]; ms., JHL). They collaborated (with C.L. Moore, Robert E.Howard, and Frank Belknap Long) on “The Challenge from Beyond” ( Fantasy Magazine,September 1935).
See T.G.L.Cockcroft, “Random Notes on Merritt and Lovecraft,” Telepath1, No. 2 (October 1954): 2– 4; Sam Moskowitz, A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pooclass="underline" A Biography(Philadelphia: Oswald Train, 1985).