Moe visited HPL for the second and final time on July 18–19, 1936, as he and his son Robert (who was working in Bridgeport, Conn.) came to Providence. HPL had been corresponding regularly with Robert since 1934. Since they had a car, they managed to visit several of the surrounding towns— Pawtuxet, Warren, and Bristol. At that time Moe and HPL participated in a final correspondence group, the Coryciani, although only two letters by HPL survive. After HPL, R.H.Barlow, and Adolphe de Castro wrote their acrostic poems on Poe on August 8, 1936, Moe himself wrote one of his own and then hectographed all four as Four Acrostic Sonnets on Edgar Allan Poe(1936). August Derleth reprinted Moe’s poem in his anthology, Poetry out of Wisconsin(1937). After HPL’s death Moe wrote the brief but poignant memoir, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Sage of Providence” ( O-Wash-TaNong,[1937]; rpt. LR).
“Moon-Bog, The.”
Short story (3,430 words); written shortly before March 10, 1921. First published in WT(June 1926); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D
Denys Barry, who comes from America to reclaim an ancestral estate in Kilderry, Ireland, decides to empty the bog on his land: “For all his love of Ireland, America had not left him untouched, and he hated the beautiful wasted space where peat might be cut and land opened up.” The peasants refuse to assist him for fear of disturbing the spirits of the bog. Barry calls in outside workers and the project continues apace, even though the workers confess suffering from strange and troublesome dreams. One night the narrator, Barry’s friend, awakes and hears a piping in the distance: “wild, weird airs that made me think of some dance of fauns on distant Maenalus” (a curious nod to “The Tree”). Then he sees the laborers dancing as if under some form of hypnosis, along with “strange airy beings in white, half indeterminate in nature, but suggesting pale wistful naiads from the haunted fountains of the bog.” But the next morning the workers seem to remember nothing of the night’s events. The next night things reach a climax: the piping is heard again, and the narrator again sees the “white-clad bog-wraiths” drifting toward the deeper waters of the bog, followed by the mesmer
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ised laborers. Then a shaft of moonlight appears, and “upward along that pallid path my fevered fancy pictured a thin shadow slowly writhing; a vague contorted shadow struggling as if drawn by unseen daemons.” It is Denys Barry, who is spirited off and never seen again.
The story was written for a St. Patrick’s Day gathering of amateurs in Boston (although the meeting took place on March 10, a week before St. Patrick’s Day). The tale is one of the most conventionally supernatural in HPL’s oeuvre. It bears an accidental similarity of plot to Lord Dunsany’s novel The Curse of the Wise Woman(1933).
Moore, C[atherine] L[ucile] (1911–1987).
Author of weird and science fiction tales, living in Indianapolis, Indiana, and late correspondent of HPL (1934–37). HPL enjoyed her early tales, especially “Shambleau” ( WT,November 1933) and “Black Thirst” ( WT,April 1934); he came in touch with her in 1934 when R.H. Barlow wished to publish some of her tales and asked HPL to write to her about it. HPL introduced her to Henry Kuttner in 1936; they married in 1940 and collaborated on most of their works thereafter. HPL’s letters to her survive only in fragments, but he kept hers. In his letters HPL keenly discusses the current political and economic situation and the interplay of economics and artistic creation; he repeatedly advised Moore not to buckle down to hackwork for the pulps. She collaborated with HPL (along with A.Merritt, Robert E.Howard, and Frank Belknap Long) on “The Challenge from Beyond” ( Fantasy Magazine,September 1935). Moore went on to write many important works of fantasy and science fiction, including “Judgment Night” (1943) and “Vintage Season” (1946).
See Susan Gubar, “C.L.Moore and the Conventions of Women’s Science Fiction,” Science-Fiction Studies7 (March 1980): 16–27; Gordon R.Benson, Jr., and Virgil S.Utter, C.L.Moore and Henry Kuttner: A Marriage of Souls and Talent: A Working Bibliography(Albuquerque, N.M.: Galactic Central, 1989).
Moore, Dr. Henry Sargent.
In “Winged Death,” a Professor of Invertebrate Biology at Columbia University, author of Diptera of Central and Southern Africa,who is killed by his rival, Dr. Thomas Slauenwite.
Morehouse, Dr. Arlo.
In “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind,” a physician who finds the body of the author Richard Blake in a country cottage, along with the strange message that he (or some other entity) had left in Blake’s typewriter. Morgan, Dr. Francis.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” a man (whether a medical doctor or a professor is unclear) who, with Henry Armitage and Warren Rice, leads the party that exterminates Wilbur Whateley’s monstrous twin brother.
Morris, Daniel (“Mad Dan”).
In “The Man of Stone,” the occupant of a cabin in the town of Mountain Top (in upstate New York) whose diary constitutes the bulk of the narrative. He learns of a technique perfected by his ancestor, Bareut Picterse Van Kauran, for turning living creatures into stone, and he uses it on a man whom he suspects of having designs on his wife, Rose. He also attempts to use it on her, but she thwarts him and successfully turns the tables on him.
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Morse, Richard Ely (1909–1986).
Poet and correspondent of HPL. Morse, a graduate of Amherst College and residing in Princeton, N.J., was introduced to HPL by Samuel Loveman in May 1932 when HPL was passing through New York; a brisk correspondence thereupon ensued. At the time Morse was a librarian at Princeton University, but in 1933 he moved to Washington, D.C., to do research for his uncle at the Library of Congress. He published one book of poetry, Winter Garden(Amherst, Mass.: Poetry Society of Amherst College, 1931). His copy for HPL bears the inscription: “For Howard Lovecraft, Magnus Magister, in return for all his gracious kindness and friendship and for all the shuddering pleasure of his tales and verse with admiration and gratitude from Richard Ely Morse.” Morse also published “Some Modern Book Illustrations” ( Californian4, No. 4 [Spring 1937]).
Morton, James Ferdinand, Jr. (1870–1941),
pamphleteer, amateur journalist, and friend of HPL. Morton received a simultaneous B.A. and M.A. from Harvard in 1892. In 1896–97 he was president of the NAPA; in later years he would become president of the Thomas Paine Natural History Association and vice president of the Esperanto Association of North America. He wrote numerous pamphlets supporting free speech, free love, and the single tax and attacking religion and race prejudice; among his publications are The Rights of Periodicals(1905?), The Curse of Race Prejudice(1906?), Sex Morality, Past, Present and Future (with William J.Robinson and others) (1912), The Case of Billy Sunday(with others) (1915), Exempting the Churches(1916), and others. Early in life he was an evangelical atheist, but later he converted to Bahaism. Morton first crossed swords with HPL when he defended Charles D.Isaacson against HPL’s attack (“In a Major Key”) in “‘Conservatism’ Gone Mad” ( In a Minor KeyNo. 2 [1915]); HPL responded with a poem (unpublished at the time), “The Isaacsonio-Mortoniad” (1915). At the time the two were not acquainted. They met unexpectedly at an amateur gathering in Boston on September 5, 1920. Although HPL was immediately taken with Morton, they only became regular correspondents after HPL met Morton again in his two visits to New York in April and September 1922. Morton assisted HPL in revising Jonathan E.Hoag’s poems for The Poetical Works of Jonathan E.Hoag(1923). He visited HPL in Providence in September 1923. and HPL showed him around Marblehead, Mass., as well as the remote villages of Chepachet and Pascoag, in northwestern Rhode Island. Morton returned to Providence on December 27, 1923. He appears to have been one of the original members of the Kalem Club and met frequently with HPL at its meetings and at other times during the latter’s New York stay (1924–26). In 1924 HPL and Morton formed the Crafton Revision Service (an ad for it appeared in L’Alouette,September 1924), but evidently it did not do much business. In February 1925 Morton became curator of the Paterson (N.J.) Museum, serving there for the remainder of his life. For a time he hoped to hire HPL as an assistant, but the prospect never materialized. HPL visited Paterson on August 30, 1925, finding the city itself dismal but the nearby Buttermilk Falls picturesque. A year later HPL commemorated the visit in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), when the narrator finds an important newspaper clipping while “Visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note.”