Cover by Don Punchatz
“The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.”
BORELLUS
As quoted in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.
As I mentioned in my last post, Bloch’s "The Man Who Collected Poe" and Lovecraft’s "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" both appeared in the Derleth anthology Night’s Yawning Peal.
"The Man Who Collected Poe" begins;
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul.”
Oh wait, that’s the beginning of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Bloch begins thusly;
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, by automobile, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of my destination.
I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with a feeling of utter confusion commingled with dismay. For it seemed to me as though I had visited this scene once before, or read about it, perhaps, in some frequently rescanned tale.” (66)
So we already know that while there might be some small nod to his friend Howard, Bloch is firmly in Poe territory here.
The narrator has driven to the estate of Lancelot Canning to see his collection of material relating to the life and works of Edgar Allen Poe. The unnamed narrator met Canning at a recent bibliophilic meeting, and while his interest in Poe is mild at best, he has intrigued by Canning, who struck him as someone who might have stepped directly from one of Poe’s tales. As the valet guides him through the house, he is not disappointed the interior could also be lifted from Poe, and when he finally meets Canning he is reclining on a sofa in the library.
As the tour begins Canning admits that the collection was begun by his grandfather, who collected first editions of Poe’s work and also was one of the group who had Poe reinterred to a more suitable spot. He also built the house, including a secret room with an iron door. Canning’s father expanded the collection. He specialized in the accumulation and study of Poe’s correspondence and also collected mementoes related to Poe and his family. While the two men talk they also seem to drink a great deal of wine and Canning opens up about the genesis of the collection, his own role in continuing to add to it, was well as some more intimate details concerning the special mania of the three generations of Canning men, when it came to Edgar Allen Poe. As far as the story goes I will leave you now.
But there are two connections to H.P. Lovecraft and his story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”. The narrator notes that the Canning collection contains De Vermis Mysteries a tome that Bloch himself added to the mythos bibliography in his short story "The Shambler from the Stars" , and the Liber Eibon which was added by Clark Ashton Smith and mentioned in his short story "Ubbo-Sathla". (75) The term essential salts also appears. (77)
As excellent resource for figuring out which forbidden books appear in which mythos stories can be found at;
As part of this exercise I reread “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, and I wanted to make a few general comments. Ward’s love of his city, Providence and the New England setting, really reminded me in a passage in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" and Randolph Carter’s love for Boston and New England.
from "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward".
“His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens. He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child’s first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky."
from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"
“For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth. It is the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily. These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love. And there is antique Salem with its brooding years, and spectral Marblehead scaling its rocky precipices into past centuries, and the glory of Salem’s towers and spires seen afar from Marblehead’s pastures across the harbour against the setting sun. “There is Providence, quaint and lordly on its seven hills over the blue harbour, with terraces of green leading up to steeples and citadels of living antiquity, and Newport climbing wraith-like from its dreaming breakwater. Arkham is there, with its moss-grown gambrel roofs and the rocky rolling meadows behind it; and antediluvian Kingsport hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and overhanging gables, and the marvel of high cliffs and the milky-misted ocean with tolling buoys beyond. “Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lanes in Portsmouth, twilight bends of rustic New-Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse walls and creaking well-sweeps. Gloucester’s salt wharves and Truro’s windy willows. Vistas of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills along the North Shore, hushed stony slopes and low ivied cottages in the lee of huge boulders in Rhode-Island’s back country. Scent of the sea and fragrance of the fields; spell of the dark woods and joy of the orchards and gardens at dawn. These, Randolph Carter, are your city; for they are yourself. New-England bore you, and into your soul she poured a liquid loveliness which cannot die. This loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood."
Lovecraft returned to Providence from his years in New York in 1926 and his return coincided with the production of his most significant works. “The Color out of Space” (1927), “The Call of of Cthulhu (1928), “The Dunwich Horror” (1929). The Whisperer in Darkness (1931) etc. “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" was begun in 1926 and completed in 1927 and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” in 1927. From the passages I quoted it is I think possible to see them as including, despite the horror in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, a loving invocation to Lovecraft’s own childhood and his ongoing admiration for the landscape of New England. Among the longest works Lovecraft had produced up until this time, and unpublished during his lifetime, it is interesting to speculate how a positive reception for one or both works might have changed Lovecraft’s subsequent career.
