The Shadow over Usenet
"The Diary of Alonzo Typer"

Sources:  _The Horror in the Museum_, Arkham; _The Horror in the Museum_,
Carroll and Graf.

Synopsis:  The diary of Alonzo Typer, an occultist who is investigating
an old Dutch house in upstate New York near the town of Chorazin.  He
finds himself unable to leave, wedged in by a wall of brambles, and
haunted by the spirits of the house's past dwellers and a shadowy presence
with huge paws.  During his explorations of the house, he finds a locked
vault in the basement, a curious key, and the spells required to enter
the lost city of Yian-ho.  As May-Eve approaches, Alonzo Typer prepares
to meet his destiny...

Comments:  This story may seem incoherent to some - but then again,
Lumley's original draft (published in _Black Forbidden Things_, Robert M.
Price ed., Borgo Press) is much worse.  For me, the story struck the
right chord between explaining too much and being vague.  Of course,
everyone will agree that the ending (where Typer is dragged off to the
cellar by black paws as he continues to write) is over the top.

William Lumley was actually a resident of Buffalo, NY, and was one of
Lovecraft's few occultist correspondents (and perhaps the only one who
continued to write him for more than a sort time).  To make a long story
short, Lumley was a mystic who believed Lovecraft and his friends
were channelling Outside entities, thereby beating Kenneth Grant to the
punch by decades.  There will be those of you who will ask if I did
any delving into Mr. Lumley's past, seeing as I live so close.  The
answer is yes, but I'm trying to get some more info so I can submit
an article to Lovecraft Studies and become rich and famous thereby.
Those with Selected Letters IV can read more on pp. 270-71.

In October 1935, Lovecraft saw Lumley's manuscript, and decided that
he really needed to help his friend.  He straightened out the piece,
and sent it back to Lumley, thinking he was going to submit it to an
amateur publication.  Lumley went all the way and submitted it to WT
instead.  When Farnsworth Wright asked him about the Lovecraftian
material, Lumley let him know what was going on (evidently Wright wasn't
aware that Lovecraft was revising other people's pieces before then).
Lovecraft let Lumley keep the money, and Lumley sent him a copy of
Budge's _Egyptian Book of the Dead_ in gratitude.

This story contains a number of interesting elements - a Greek copy of
the Necronomicon, the Liber Ivonis, and De Vermis Mysteriis - and
is the first mention of the lost city of Yian-Ho and the city of
Chorazin, named after a town condemned by Jesus (Matthew 11:21,
Luke 10:13).  Two sequels have been written - Lumley's "The Statement
of One John Gibson" (_The New Lovecraft Circle_, Fedogan and Bremer) and
Price's "The Strange Fate of Alonzo Typer" (Nyctalops 19), both of which
I wish I had time to read again.

Next week, I'm going away for the holidays, but I may decide to have
an orgy of TSOU postings before I go, just so I can be done.  Coming
up are "The Haunter of the Dark", "In the Walls of Eryx", and "The
Night Ocean".

Yrs.,

Daniel Harms
http://members.tripod.com/~danharms/

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THE DIARY OF ALONZO TYPER was one of my favorite stories when I was about 12
and unable to spot things like ...That Ending...!!!!!  When I read the story
again, about 10 years ago, it was a HUGE disappointment and farce.

I've read the Lumley story above, but didn't know about the Price. "Statement"
is ok, I'd rank it in the middle class of Lumley's work. It's no "Spaghetti",
though.

And while I would never try to write a sequel to the thing, I did mention "the
Typer diary" in a list of "real" occult works in one of my stories. Just a
*Little* homage, because really it didn't DESERVE any more than that...but it
sure was a roller coaster when I was 12...

"It is said that Music is a universal language, crossing the barriers of
culture, age, and language. Perhaps, eventually, we will learn that it also
spans those of time... and space."  

Hello All,

For those of you who don't have the forth volume of the selected
letters, here is the quote that Mr. Harms was referring to in his post.
Personally, I can't decide if Lovecraft is describing an actual comment
made by Lumley, or if Lovecraft is simply running off on some wild,
creative tangent.  I am presently leaning toward the latter.  After all,
we all know that Lumley could not possess an "air of familiarity" with
three of the authors mentioned by Lovecraft.  Also, the hyperbolic
manner in which Lovecraft relates Lumley's alledged exploits certainly
suggests that this whole letter is little more than a lengthy and
amusing joke.  Having written that, I'll now allow you to decide for
yourselves.

"Good old Lumley will devour it avidly and with real appreciation.  He
is surely a unique survival from the earth's mystical childhood - a
combination of priceless credulity and gorgeous Munchausenism.  I think
I've told you about his claims of extensive travel in China, Nepal, and
all sorts of mysterious and forbidden places, and his air of familiarity
with such works as the arcana of Paracelsus, Hermes Trismegistus,
Albertus Magnus, Apollonius of Tyana, Eibon, von Junzt, and Abdul
Alhazred.  He says he has witnessed monstrous rites in deserted cities,
has slept in pre-human ruins and awaked twenty years older, has seen
strange elemental spirits in all lands (including Buffalo, N.Y. - where
he frequently sees a white, misty Presence), has written and
collaborated on powerful dramas, has conversed with incredibly wise and
monstrously ancient wizards in remote Asiatic fastness (one of them,
referred to as The Oriental Ancient, was in Buffalo last year and had
several solemn conclaves with Bill, but has now returned to his own
far-off demesne at the edge of the world!), and not long ago had sent
him from India for perusal a palaegean and terrible book in an unknown
tongue  (unknown and primordial tongues are as easy to Bill as high
school Latin to you and me!)  which he could not open without certain
ceremonies of purification, including the donning of a white robe.  He
has, of course, suffered persecution and ridicule, but nothing can
swerve him from his devotion to the secret and soul-shattering lore of
the nether cosmic gulfs!  His own sorceries, I judge, are of a somewhat
modest kind; though he has some very strange and marvellous results from
clay images and from certain cryptical incantations.  He is firmly
convinced that all of our gang - you, Two_Gun Bob, Sonny Belknap,
Grandpa E'ch-Pi-El, and the rest - are genuine agents of unseen Powers
in distributing hints too dark and profound for human conception or
comprehension.  We may _think_ were writing fiction, and may even
(absurd thought!) disbelieve what we write, but at bottom we are telling
the truth in spite of ourselves - serving unwittingly as mouthpieces of
Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleasant outside gentry.  Indeed -
Bill tells me that he has fully identified my Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep
.......so that he can tell me more about 'em than I know myself!  With a
little encouragement, good old Bill would unfold limitless chronicles
from beyond the border - but I like the old boy so well that I never
make fun of him.  He is really tremendously likable - and with a
spontaneous gratitude and generosity that are almost pathetic."  (SL
IV,  270-271)

Regards and Best Wishes,

Donald Eric Kesler

In article <75a7ta$vj...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
        vonju...@hotmail.com wrote:

I'm away on vacation myself, and I probably won't be able to make this week's IRC session either - should be back in January.
Might be interesting to discuss this story in connection with M.R. James' "Count Magnus" - while Price has made a good case
for the influence of James' story on "The Call of Cthulhu," both "Diary" and "Count Magnus" feature pilgrimages to Chorazin.
You could also read this story as a more open-ended reworking of "The Dunwich Horror," without the tidy disposal of the evil
of the latter story.

Steven

It is true that he couldn't have had a REAL air of familiarity with the work of
three of those "authors", but since Lumley believed that the Weird Tales
Musketeers were being used by the Real Cthulhu and Co, could he not have just
as erronously claimed to have read the Real Necronomicon, Nameless Cults and
Book of Eibon...the ones that Cthulhu and Co were transmitting insidiously into
the Musketeers' writings, so that generations later people would be inspired to
hunt up the Real books by their pulp stories? (so to speak).

Except behind his BACK, of course, in passages such as this one!

"It is said that Music is a universal language, crossing the barriers of
culture, age, and language. Perhaps, eventually, we will learn that it also
spans those of time... and space."  

Hello Richard,

Had Lumley actually professed a genuine belief in the Necronomicon, I am
quite sure that Lovecraft would have attempted to set the record
straight as he did with a few other individuals.  Of course, Lovecraft
may have indeed written such a letter which has been subsequently
misplaced or destroyed.  Still, this niggling detail and the other
obvious exaggerations does cast the statements made in the letter in a
somewhat questionable light.

Was Lovecraft joking about Lumley's suggestion that, Howard, Long, Smith
and himself were indeed tapping into some very real powers from the
beyond?  Since most of the letter seems to be little more than a
humorous caricature of Lumley, I'm inclined to believe that these
statements were also meant as a jest.  Of course, I could be wrong.

You noted that Lovecraft is poking fun at Lumley behind his back.  I am
afraid that I must agree with your observation.  Lovecraft was often
two-faced in his correspondence.  It is sad, but it is true.

Regards and Best Wishes,

Donald Eric Kesler    

Given the estimated fraction of Lovecraft's correspondence which survives,
the absence of such a letter is hardly evidence of anything. While visiting
Brown, I made a point of looking for letters from/to Lumley in the HPL
collection. Unfortunately, the results were disappointing. The two letters
of 1935 from Lumley (2 Jan and 1 July) in Box 25 dealt with cats. Apparently
he shared HPL's fondness for them.

That he's poking fun at Lumley's beliefs is readily granted. That such
poking casts doubt on the substance of the alledged beliefs strikes me
as an odd jump of reasoning, especially absent any contrary evidence.

CAS appears to have taken Lovecraft's description at face value. In CAS'
April 13, 1937 letter to Derleth (reprinted in the Hallowmas '85 _Crypt of
Cthulhu_) he writes, "Incidentally, HPL and I received dozens of queries,
at one time or another, as to where The Book of Eibon, the Necronomicon,
Von Junzst's Nameless Cults, etc., could be obtained! I believe one of HPL's
correspondents, a Maine Yankee with leanings towards wizardry, promised
not to put any information given him to evil uses! Another, a woman claiming
descent from infamous New England witches and also from Lucretia Borgia,
offered HPL some inside dope on the witch cult and its practices. As for me,
I'll never forget the letters from that paretic Swede, Olsen; one of which
letters corrected at great length certain mistaken notions of Abdul Alhazred.
But I remember also that you had some experience with Olsen and his patents
of infernal and grandiose nobility!" Lumley would appear to be the "Maine
Yankee" refered to, while the "woman claiming descent from infamous New
England witches" would appear to be the one HPL writes CAS about in letters
350 and 351 in Vol. 2 of _Selected Letters_. I don't recall seeing any other
information about this Olsen character.

Karl

Hello Mr. Kluge,

I'll readily agree that the absence of a letter correcting Lumley
indicates very little.  I was merely pointing out that if Lovecraft
really believed that Lumley believed in the Necronomicon, then Lovecraft
would have attempted to set him straight.

Regarding Lovecraft's two-faced nature, I never wrote that there was a
connection between this and the validity of his report on Lumley's
beliefs.  All I wrote on this subject was the following: "You noted that
Lovecraft is poking fun at Lumley behind his back.  I am afraid that I
must agree with your observation.  Lovecraft was often two-faced in his
correspondence.  It is sad, but it is true."

This was in response to the following comment made by StoOdin101:
"Except behind his BACK, of course, in passages such as this one!"

StoOdin101 was, of course, responding to this comment made by
Lovecraft:  "With a little encouragement, good old Bill would unfold
limitless chronicles from beyond the border - but I like the old boy so
well that I never make fun of him."

In any event, my problem with using this letter as a valid source of
information on the beliefs of William Lumley stems from the fact that it
contains obvious humorous exaggerations and fictional creations.
Lovecraft, in this letter, claims that Lumley displays an "air of
familiarity with such works as the arcana of Paracelsus, Hermes
Trismegistus, Albertus Magnus, Apollonius of Tyana, Eibon, von Junzt,
and Abdul Alhazred."  This is clearly a fictional exaggeration of
Lumley's real interest in the occult.  Likewise, Lovecraft states that
Lumley has had some small degree of success with certain minor spells.

kind; though he has some very strange and marvellous results from clay
images and from certain cryptical incantations."  This too is clearly
fictional.  After all, Lovecraft, in his more serious letters, clearly
displays his disbelief in all things supernatural.  It is also worth
noting that this statement is made immediately before the statement that
Lumley is "firmly convinced that all of our gang - you, Two_Gun Bob,
Sonny Belknap, Grandpa E'ch-Pi-El, and the rest - are genuine agents of
unseen Powers in distributing hints too dark and profound for human
conception or comprehension."  I find it odd that Lovecraft would be
clearly joking in one sentence and then relaying a factual report in the
next.  It seems far more likely that he was simply joking or
exaggerating all along.

You note that Clark Ashton Smith wrote,  "I believe one of HPL's
correspondents, a Maine Yankee with leanings towards wizardry, promised
not to put any information given him to evil uses!"

While this statement does support the fact that Lumley did possess an
interest in the occult (a fact which no one is disputing), it does not
even mention the concept of Lovecraft & Co. serving as mouthpieces for
Cthulhu &Co.

Of course, as I have stated all along, it is entirely possible that
Lumley was indeed convinced that Lovecraft & Co. was tapping into the
forces from beyond.  All I am saying is that corroborating evidence is
required before we can make any definitive statements about Lumley's
beliefs.  

Regards and Best Wishes,

Donald Eric Kesler

You're absolutely right on that point. Of course, people like Wolfgang
Mueller are evidence that such explicit denials by HPL might not have
much effect....

The question is whether HPL is the source of the exagerations or Lumley.
He starts his description of Lumley by saying, "He is...a combination of
priceless credulity and gorgeous Munchausenism."
                        ----------------------

Is it? The fictional nature of Albdul Alhazred didn't stop the "paretic
Swede, Olsen" from writting CAS a letter in which he "corrected at great
length certain mistaken notions of Abdul Alhazred." The fictional nature
of the _Necronomicon_ hasn't stopped the above mentioned W. Mueller from
going in quest of the real item in the diary of John Dee.

There's also another possibility. Given that Lovecraft says of Lumley,
"Indeed - Bill tells me that he has fully identified my Cthulhu and
Nyarlathotep," it's possible that what is meant is that Lumley claimed
familiarity with the "real" writers underlying the names used in the
Mythos stories.

Ironic perhaps. "Clearly fictional?" I'm not convinced.

Again, what you see as HPL "clearly joking" I see as "ironically commenting."

Since it's possible to point to at least one individual who has published
books professing such a belief (Kenneth Grant), what is so improbable about
Lumley having such a belief?

Can you document cases of Lovecraft materially misrepresenting someone's
beliefs in the way you're convinced he's doing here? Yes, in his letters
he sometimes goes off on creative fictive tangents with his correspondents
(for instance, in letter 588, 12/20/32 to EHP: "_Zemargad_ is in neither
the _Necronomicon_, nor in von Juntz's _Unaussprechlichen Kulten_, unless
perchance it be in that passage (_Nec._ xii, 58 -- p. 984) in Naacal
hieroglyphics, whose fullest purport I was never able to unravel. The
Yashis passage in von Junzt (footnote, p. 751, ed. 1839) -- [line of
characters] etc. -- hints at a vague, ultra-dimensional realm of nameless
horror best transliterated as _H'mar_;..."), but that's very different
from what's alledgedly going on here.

Or, for that matter, he could have been pulling Lovecraft's leg, and
Lovecraft didn't realize it.

Absent documented instances of HPL substantively misrepresenting someone
else's beliefs, I see no reason to assume that the description (minus the
irony) is all that hyperbolic, let alone fabricated. I've read USENET
news groups devoted to fringe topics for a long enough time now to see
nothing inherently improbable in the picture HPL paints. There are folks
like that out there. Many of them wind up as guests on the Art Bell show.

Karl

In article <92oww3m6oei....@heron.eecs.umich.edu>,
  Karl Kluge <kckl...@heron.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:

      I'd differ on the identification of the Maine Yankee with William
Lumley.  As best I can tell, Lumley was living in Buffalo, NY throughout
the time he was writing Lovecraft.

Yrs.,

Daniel Harms
http://members.tripod.com/~danharms/

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Hello Mr. Kludge,

I found something quite interesting - A Lovecraft letter from May 12,
1931 in which Lovecraft does inform Lumley of the true nature of one of
the books mentioned in his fiction.

"....The idea of a land of darkness is excellent, and one footnote
telling of an ancient MSS. _which even the Egyptian priests could not
read_ excited my imagination tremendously.  That kind of thing resembles
my own (purely mythical) "Pnakotic Manuscripts"; which are supposed to
be the work of the "Elder Ones" preceding the human race on this planet
and handed down through an early human civilization which once existed
around the north pole........"  (SL III, 372-373).

I wish that I had the complete letter.  The offhand way in which
Lovecraft designates the Panoktic Manuscripts as mythical suggests that
Lovecraft had already explained the fictional nature of his forbidden
tomes earlier in this letter or, perhaps, in a previous letter.  

Of course, as you correctly noted, some individuals today believe in the
existence of the Necronomicon despite all of the evidence to the
contrary; however, the letter I quoted in the first part of this post
indicates that this issue was touched upon and probably resolved in an
amicable manner.  Perhaps, Mr. Loucks can fill in the missing pieces of
this letter after the holidays.

You point out that Lovecraft did indeed describe Lumley as "a
combination of priceless credulity and gorgeous Munchausenism."  And you
suggest that the exaggerations presented by Lovecraft may indeed reflect
Lumley's own exaggerations.  This seems valid.  Not only is Lumely
readily willing to believe the fantastical, but he is also quite willing
to elaborate with poetic licence his own adventures in the fantastic.

However, it is difficult to determine where Lovecraft's whimsey ends and
Lumley's Munchausenism begins.  After all, Lovecraft mentions in the
same letter that Lumley owns a copy of the Panoktic Manuscripts. This
was in 1933, two years after Lovecraft told Lumley about the Panoktic
Manuscripts and its fictional nature.  Surely Lumley did not claim to
own a copy of this book.

You wrote the following: "There's also another possibility. Given that
Lovecraft says of Lumley, "Indeed - Bill tells me that he has fully
identified my Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep," it's possible that what is
meant is that Lumley claimed familiarity with the "real" writers
underlying the names used in the Mythos stories."

This is a very provocative theory, but one that is not entirely outside
the realm of possibility.  After all, there are so many inside jokes and
allusions in Lovecraft's fiction and letters that sometimes Lovecraft's
own circle of friends experienced difficulty.

One day, Robert E. Howard received  the original manuscript of _At the
Mountains of Madness_. Lovecraft had sent the tale on its rounds through
the mail to several of his friends.  On the title page Lovecraft had
scrawled the following instructions.

'Schedule of Circulation'
'Augustus Derletus to Donald Vandreius
Melmoth the Wanderer to Klarkash-Ton
Klarkash-Ton to B'ra-Dwi-yhah'
Bernardus Diverius to Grandpa Theobald'

Howard recognized all but one of these names.  Curious, Howard sent the
following poem to Tevis Clyde Smith.

WHO IS GRANDPA THEOBOLD?

by Robert E. Howard

Cities brooding beneath the seas
Yield their chalcedon and gold;
Ruthless hands the treasure seize,
Rending the ages' mysteries,
But who is Grandpa Theobold?

Secrets of the eternal Sphinx
Is a story worn and old,
Like a tale too often told;
All the ancient unknown shrinks -
But who is Grandpa Theobold?

Fingers turn the hidden keys,
Looting wealth from lair and hold;
Cast what shapes in what dim mold?
Question now the Eternities.
But who is Grandpa Theobold?

Prince, before you snare the stars,
Speak, before the sun grows cold,
Scowling through the morning bars,
Who is Grandpa Theobold?

Of course, Grandpa Theobald is none other than Lovecraft himself.
Howard obviously mistook the "a" for an "o", which explains why the name
is rendered in the poem as Theobold instead of Theobald.  

But I digress.

You asked me the following:  "Can you document cases of Lovecraft
materially misrepresenting someone's beliefs in the way you're convinced
he's doing here?"

First of all, I am not at all convinced that Lovecraft is materially
misrepresenting Lumley's beliefs.  I am simply pointing out that the
whimsical aspect of Lovecraft's personality is definitely evident in
this letter, and that it is a questionable source for  determining
Lumley's beliefs.

Now that I have clarified my point of view, I'll address your admittedly
difficult question.  I will readily confess that I have yet to find a
deliberate misrepresentation of another's beliefs in Lovecraft's
letters, yet I have found evidence of poetic licence, such as where
Lovecraft informs James F. Morton that Clark Ashton Smith is descended
from Tsathoggua.  (SL V, 183)  I have also located a letter in which
Lovecraft draws some erroneous ethical conclusions from certain aspects
of Einstien's theory of relativity.  (SL I, 231)  The first example I
offer indicates Lovecraft's love of whimsy, while the latter indicate an
ability to misunderstand another.  I have even found a letter in which
Lovecraft tells a bald-faced lie.  (SL II, 110)  In this letter,
Lovecraft informs Dwyer that he had graduated from High School - a
statement that is clearly contradicted in other letters by Lovecraft.

Of course, I would be a damned fool if I failed to concede that none of
the three letters really address the very valid point which you raised;
however, I present them as evidence that Lovecraft's letters cannot be
simply taken at face value.  Lovecraft, in his correspondence, makes
jokes, unintentionally misrepresents others and even tells lies.
Although I am fairly sure that the latter is not the case in this
instance, I do suspect that either a jest or a misunderstanding could
account for Lovecraft's statements regarding Lumley's beliefs.

Of course, I will continue looking for evidence of Lovecraft
misrepresenting the beliefs of another in his letters.  If such a letter
is out there, I'll find it and share it with you.  If you should happen
to discover such a document before me, then please share your
information with me.

The main point that I have been striving to make in this whole thread is
that Lovecraft, in this letter, is clearly having fun.  It is
questionable whether or not we should take anything Lovecraft says about
Lumley in this letter too seriously.  Is it possible that Lumley really
believed in Cthulhu & Co.?  Of course it is possible.  As you pointed
out, a lot of people believe in odd things.  All I ask for is another
source that supports this information.

I realise that you may choose to accept this source as entirely valid.
That is fine.  Quite a number of brilliant scholars accept this source
as valid.  In fact, this is apparently one of the few things that both
Robert M. Price and S.T. Joshi agree upon.  In any event, I am quite
willing to agree to disagree.

Regards and Best Wishes,

Donald Eric Kesler

...

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