Pinned with a thumb-tack to a vacant part of the canvas was a piece of paper,[99] now badly curled up—probably, I thought, a photograph from which Pickman meant to paint a background as hideous as the nightmare it was to enhance. I reached out to uncurl and look at it, when suddenly I saw Pickman start as if shot. He had been listening with peculiar intensity ever since my shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the dark cellar, and now he seemed struck with a fright which, though not comparable to my own, had in it more of the physical than of the spiritual. He drew a revolver and motioned me to silence, then stepped out into the main cellar and closed the door behind him.
I think I was paralysed[100] for an instant. Imitating Pickman’s listening, I fancied I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or bleats[101] in a direction I couldn’t determine. I thought of huge rats and shuddered. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh[102]—a furtive, groping kind of clatter, though I can’t attempt to convey what I mean in words. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that make me think of?
It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before.[103] After that followed a sharp grating noise, a shouted gibberish from Pickman, and the deafening discharge of all six chambers of a revolver, fired spectacularly as a lion-tamer might fire in the air for effect. A muffled squeal or squawk, and a thud. Then more wood and brick grating, a pause, and the opening of the door—at which I’ll confess I started violently. Pickman reappeared with his smoking weapon, cursing the bloated rats that infested the ancient well.
“The deuce knows what they eat, Thurber,” he grinned, “for those archaic tunnels touched graveyard and witch-den and seacoast.[104] But whatever it is, they must have run short, for they were devilish anxious to get out. Your yelling stirred them up, I fancy. Better be cautious in these old places—our rodent friends are the one drawback, though I sometimes think they’re a positive asset by way of atmosphere and colour.”[105]
Well, Eliot, that was the end of the night’s adventure. Pickman had promised to shew[106] me the place, and heaven[107] knows he had done it. He led me out of that tangle of alleys in another direction, it seems, for when we sighted a lamp post[108] we were in a half-familiar street with monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks and old houses. Charter Street, it turned out to be, but I was too flustered to notice just where we hit it. We were too late for the elevated, and walked back downtown through Hanover Street. I remember that walk. We switched from Tremont up Beacon, and Pickman left me at the corner of Joy, where I turned off. I never spoke to him again.
Why did I drop him? Don’t be impatient. Wait till I ring for coffee. We’ve had enough of the other stuff, but I for one need something. No—it wasn’t the paintings I saw in that place; though I’ll swear they were enough to get him ostracised[109] in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs of Boston, and I guess you won’t wonder now why I have to steer clear of subways and cellars. It was—something I found in my coat the next morning. You know, the curled-up paper tacked to that frightful canvas in the cellar; the thing I thought was a photograph of some scene he meant to use as a background for that monster. That last scare had come while I was reaching to uncurl it, and it seems I had vacantly crumpled it into my pocket. But here’s the coffee—take it black, Eliot, if you’re wise.
Yes, that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman; Richard Upton Pickman, the greatest artist I have[110] ever known—and the foulest being that ever leaped the bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. Eliot,[111] old Reid was right. He wasn’t strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he’d found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. It’s all the same now, for he’s gone—back into the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt. Here, let’s have the chandelier going.
Don’t ask me to explain or even conjecture about what I burned. Don’t ask me, either, what lay behind that mole-like scrambling Pickman was so keen to pass off as rats. There are secrets, you know, which might have come down from old Salem times, and Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. You know how damned lifelike[112] Pickman’s paintings were—how we all wondered where he got those faces.
Well—that paper wasn’t a photograph of any background, after all. What it shewed[113] was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using—and its background was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail. But by God,[114] Eliot, it was a photograph from life.
Notes
1. Editor’s Note: HPL’s original A.Ms. turned up some time ago; it is held by private hands. It is of interest in recording a passage toward the end that was excised. (HPL curiously suggests that he had destroyed this A.Ms. [OFF 85].) The T.Ms. was prepared by HPL. It was followed by Weird Tales (October 1927), with the usual editorial alterations; the Arkham House editions also follow the T.Ms., with some alterations. One revision—the alteration of “Marlborough Street” to “Newbury Street,” occurring three times in the text—appears in the T.Ms. in pencil, but not in HPL’s hand; the handwriting may be Barlow’s. This revision, along with several others, appears in the Weird Tales reprint (November 1936), meaning that HPL provided a revised text for the reprint (probably a tearsheet of the original appearance with revisions in pen). Other variants in the reprint are, however, probably editorial.
Texts: A = A.Ms. (private hands); B = T.Ms. (JHL); C = Weird Tales 10, No. 4 (October 1927): 505–14; D = Weird Tales 28, No. 4 (November 1936): 495–505; E = The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House, 1963), 19–32. Copy-text: B (with some readings from D).
2. Bosworth] Rosworth E
3. honour] honor C, D
4. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
5. “Ghoul Feeding”.] Ghoul Feeding. C, D; “Ghoul Feeding.” D, E
6. Nature] nature C, D
7. Witches’ Sabbath] Witches’ Sabbath D
8. colour] color C, D
9. heaven] Heaven A, B, E
10. Nature] nature C, D
11. mediaeval] medieval C, D
12. chimaeras] chimeras C, D
13. “Ghoul Feeding”] Ghoul Feeding C, D
14. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
15. about;] about, D
16. shew] show B, C, D, E
17. Newbury] Marlborough A, B, C [altered in B in pencil, but not in HPL’s handwriting]
18. organised] organized C, D
19. live] love D
20. aesthete] esthete C, D
21. realise] realize C, D
22. shew] show A, B, C, D, E
23. shew . . . shew] show . . . show A, B, C, D, E
24. ‘Magnalia’] Magnalia A, B, C, D, E
25. ‘Wonders . . . World’.] Wonders . . . World. A, B, C, D, E
26. burying-ground,] burying ground, A, B, C, E
27. since,] since A, B, C, E
28. shew] show B, C, D, E
29. times!] time! E
30. tea-table!] teatable! E
31. guide-books] guidebooks A, B, C, E
32. escape] escapes A, B, C, E
33. Or] Or, D
34. Newbury] Marlborough A, B, C [altered in B as above]
35. twelve] 12 C
36. all;] all: E
37. ten-panelled] ten-paneled C, D
38. panelling] paneling C, D
39. Phipps] Phips C, D
40. witchcraft.] Witchcraft. A, B, C, E
41. “hard-boiled”,] “hard-boiled,” C, D, E
42. shew] show B, C, D, E
43. Newbury] Marlborough A, B, C [altered in B as above]
44. go”.] go.” A, B, C, D, E
45. horror] horror, A, B, C, E
46. foetor] fetor C, D
47. panelled] paneled C, D
48. Burying-Ground,] Burying Ground, A, B, C, E
49. favourite] favorite C, D
50. preëminently] pre-/eminently C; pre-eminently D
&nbs
p; 51. daemoniac] demoniac C, D
52. degree.] degrees. C, D
53. forward-slumping] forward slumping, A, B, C, E
54. shewn] shown A, B, C, D, E
55. shewn] shown B, C, D, E
56. shewed] showed A, B, C, D, E
57. God,] heaven, D
58. “The Lesson”] The Lesson C, D
59. heaven] Heaven A, B, E
60. dog-like] doglike A, B, C, D, E
61. shewing] showing A, B, C, D, E
62. non-human] nonhuman E
63. seventeenth-century] Seventeenth Century C, D
64. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
65. me,] me; A, B, C, E
66. studies”.] studies.” E
67. shews] shows A, B, C, D, E
68. I’m] I’m middle-aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in France to know I’m A, B, C, E
69. colonial] Colonial D
70. shewn] shown B, C, D, E
71. overrunning] over-running E
72. “Subway Accident”,] Subway Accident, C, D; “Subway Accident,” E
73. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
74. ant-like] antlike C
75. guide-book] guidebook A, B, C, E; guide-/book D
76. “Holmes, . . . Auburn”.] “Holmes, . . . Auburn.” A, B, D, E; Holmes, . . . Auburn. C
77. analyse] analyze C, D
78. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
79. mortal] moral D
80. daemons] demons C, D
81. conventionalised;] conventionalized; C, D
82. lifelike,] life-like, D
83. pandemonium] pandaemonium A, B, E
84. crystal clear] crystal-clear C, D
85. heaven!] Heaven! A, B, E
86. down-cellar] down cellar A, B, C, E
87. seventeenth century,] Seventeenth Century, C, D
88. disc] disk C, D
89. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
90. pencilled] penciled C, D
91. guide-lines] guide lines A, B, C, E
92. re-echoed] echoed A, B, C, E
93. Creator,] Creator! A, B, C, E
94. fancy!] fancy. A, B, C, E
95. But] But, D
96. mould-caked] mold-caked C, D
97. Nature’s] nature’s C, D
98. fiend] Fiend A, B, C, D, E
99. paper,] paper A, B, C, E
100. paralysed] paralyzed C, D
101. squeals or bleats] squeals, or bleats, D; squeals or beats E
102. gooseflesh] goose-flesh D
103. before.] before. What did it was it that gripped malignly at my memory, playing with it as a cat plays with a mouse or a ghoul plays with a corpse? God!—Yes—that was it! The wooden cover on that well—the ancient brick well that reached to the labyrinth of witchcraft tunnels to graveyard & den & sea! It had been pushed up from beneath by something trying to get out. And even as I reeled from the impact of that idea I heard a steady grating sound. The cover was coming off! ¶ A shot broke the spell. My eyes, released from the hypnosis of fear, Whether it was followed by a muffled squawk & a thud I can’t be sure; for my eyes, released from the fright-hypnosis, were focussing all my remaining faculties in a search for a means of escape. I spied a narrow window over the table, & leaping up, was fumbling with the rusty hasp when another shot sounded from the main cellar. A [excised]
104. seacoast.] sea-coast. E
105. colour.”] color.” C, D
106. shew] show B, C, D, E
107. heaven] Heaven A, B, E
108. lamp post] lamp-post C, D
109. ostracised] ostracized C, D
110. have] had D
111. Eliot,] Eliot— A, B, C, E
112. lifelike] life-like D
113. shewed] showed B, C, D, E
114. God,] heaven, D
The Silver Key
When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of[1] the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt these[2] liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether. No more could his galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, or his elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, where forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon.
He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse[3] the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears a superstitious reverence for that which tangibly and physically exists, and had made him secretly ashamed to dwell in visions. Wise men told him his simple fancies were inane and childish, and he believed it because he could see that they might easily be so. What he failed to recall was that the deeds of reality are just as inane and[4] childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from[5] something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.
They had chained him down to things that are, and had then explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world. When he complained, and longed to escape into twilight realms where magic moulded[6] all the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his mind into vistas of breathless expectancy and unquenchable delight, they turned him instead toward the new-found[7] prodigies of science, bidding him find wonder in the atom’s vortex and mystery in the sky’s dimensions. And when he had failed to find these boons in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creation.
So Carter had tried to do as others did, and pretended that the common events and emotions of earthy minds were more important than the fantasies of rare and delicate souls. He did not dissent when they told him that the animal pain of a stuck pig or dyspeptic ploughman[8] in real life is a greater thing than the peerless beauty of Narath with its hundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which he dimly remembered from his dreams; and under their guidance he cultivated a painstaking sense of pity and tragedy.
Once in a while, though, he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are, and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold. Then he would have recourse to the polite laughter they had taught him to use against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he saw that the daily life of our world is every inch as extravagant and artificial, and far less worthy of respect because of its poverty in beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own lack of reason and purpose. In this way he became a kind of humorist, for he did not see that even humour[9] is empty in a mindless universe devoid of any true standard of consistency or inconsistency.
In the first days of his bondage he had turned to the gentle churchly faith endeared to him by the naive[10] trust of his fathers, for thence stretched mystic avenues which seemed to promise escape from life. Only on closer view did he mark the starved fancy and beauty, the stale and prosy triteness, and the owlish gravity and grotesque claims of solid truth which reigned boresomely and overwhelmingly among most of its professors; or feel to the full the awkwardness with which it sought to keep alive as literal fact the outgrown fears and guesses of a primal race confronting the unknown. It wearied Carter to see how solemnly people tried to make earthly reality out of old myths which every step of their boasted science confuted,
and this misplaced seriousness killed the attachment he might have kept for the ancient creeds had they been content to offer the sonorous rites and emotional outlets in their true guise of ethereal fantasy.
But when he came to study those who had thrown off the old myths, he found them even more ugly than those who had not. They did not know that beauty lies in harmony, and that loveliness of life has no standard amidst an aimless cosmos save only its harmony with the dreams and the feelings which have gone before and blindly moulded our little spheres out of the rest of chaos. They did not see that good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and whose finer details are different for every race and culture. Instead, they either denied these things altogether or transferred them to the crude, vague instincts which they shared with the beasts and peasants; so that their lives were dragged malodorously out in pain, ugliness, and disproportion, yet filled with a ludicrous pride at having escaped from something no more unsound than that which still held them. They had traded the false gods of fear and blind piety for those of licence[11] and anarchy.
Carter did not taste deeply of these modern freedoms; for their cheapness and squalor sickened a spirit loving beauty alone,[12] while his reason rebelled at the flimsy logic with which their champions tried to gild brute impulse with a sacredness stripped from the idols they had discarded. He saw that most of them, in common with their cast-off priestcraft, could not escape from the delusion that life has a meaning apart from that which men dream into it; and could not lay aside the crude notion of ethics and obligations beyond those of beauty, even when all Nature shrieked of its unconsciousness and impersonal unmorality in the light of their scientific discoveries. Warped and bigoted with preconceived illusions of justice, freedom, and consistency, they cast off the old lore and the old ways[13] with the old beliefs; nor ever stopped to think that that lore and those ways were the sole makers of their present thoughts and judgments, and the sole guides and standards in a meaningless universe without fixed aims or stable points of reference. Having lost these artificial settings, their lives grew void of direction and dramatic interest; till at length they strove to drown their ennui in bustle and pretended usefulness, noise and excitement, barbaric display and animal sensation. When these things palled, disappointed, or grew nauseous through revulsion, they cultivated irony and bitterness, and found fault with the social order. Never could they realise[14] that their brute foundations were as shifting and contradictory as the gods of their elders, and that the satisfaction of one moment is the bane of the next. Calm, lasting beauty comes only in dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence.