TSOU -- The Strange High House in the Mist
Daniel Harms
Yes, I'm late, and I won't try to explain why.
Let's get started:
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Strange High House in the Mist"
Source: _Dagon_, Arkham.
Synopsis: The townsfolk of Kingsport wonder about an
old house on the edge of a cliff that towers above their
town. Olney, a tourist and a dreamer, decides that he
must visit this house. Upon reaching it, he is admitted by
an old man in antique garb who tells him the lore of
Atlantis and introduces him to Neptune and Nodens.
When he returns, he has left his dreaming side in the
house, and the townsfolk fear what will happen if others
are drawn to the strange high house in the mists.
Comments: I really did enjoy this one. Some might compare
this to Dunsany, but I doubt Dunsany would mix in so much
terror and wonder in one piece. It has a very religious feeling
to it, in fact; mystical writings sometimes state how wonderful
and terrible it is to meet the Divine, and I think Lovecraft has
captured this feeling admirably.
According to Joshi, Lovecraft had no particular
place in mind when he wrote this tale, but de Camp mentions
a house in Magnolia, a town in Massachusetts which HPL
and Sonia visited, which has its door flush with a cliff-face.
I don't think I can resolve this, but I'll let it stand. The story
was another one that HPL's editor Wright rejected and then
accepted later. The O'Henry Memorial Prize Annual later
gave it a first-class rating.
This story is the first appearance of Nodens,
a Celtic god who Lovecraft probably appropriated from
Machen's "The Great God Pan". (Does anyone know
where the image of him riding in a shell pulled by fantastic
beasts comes from?) Derleth would later appropriate him
and turn him into an Elder God -- in fact, the only named one.
(Why he didn't take Neptune and Triton and the rest, I
don't know.) Kingsport itself turned up before in "The Terrible
Old Man", "The Fesival", and "The Silver Key", and the
Terrible Old Man makes a cameo appearance as well.
Chaosium published a scenario in its _Kingsport_ book
based around the House.
Finally, I once saw a Web site called "The
Strange High House in the Mist." It was -- odd. Not at
all what you'd think. Fortunately for my own sanity I don't
remember where it was.
Daniel M. Harms "What may blight the damsel so?
Vanderbilt University Watermelon, work. or woe?"
har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu H. P. Lovecraft
Sean Rodgers
> This story is the first appearance of Nodens,
> a Celtic god who Lovecraft probably appropriated from
> Machen's "The Great God Pan". (Does anyone know
> where the image of him riding in a shell pulled by fantastic
> beasts comes from?)
I believe Nodens was called the "Cloudbearer" and was pulled in a shell
by something that I forget across the sky. He was worshipped pretty
heavily in pre-Roman Britian, and when Julius Caesar invaded and turned
it in to the Roman province of Britannia, they let the Celts keep
worshipping Nodens as they found it to be almost exactly like Jupiter.
BTW, I thought "The Strange High House In The Mist" pretty good.
Sean.
-----------------------------------------
Sean Rodgers
<se...@rogerswave.ca>
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the
inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
-H.P. Lovecraft, "Call of Cthulhu"
-----------------------------------------
briley
In article <5c1eac$4...@news.vanderbilt.edu>,
har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu says...
> This story is the first appearance of Nodens,
>a Celtic god who Lovecraft probably appropriated from
>Machen's "The Great God Pan". (Does anyone know
>where the image of him riding in a shell pulled by fantastic
>beasts comes from?) Derleth would later appropriate him
>and turn him into an Elder God -- in fact, the only named one.
>(Why he didn't take Neptune and Triton and the rest, I
>don't know.)
I believe it's because Nodens appears at the end of "The
Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", cheering Carter on as he escapes
Nyarlathotep. Not that I'd defend Derleth's "Elder Gods" ...
I found it rather odd, as when I finally read "The Great God
Pan", Nodens had a decidedly more sinister flavor.
Andrew M. Kuchling
To me, "The Strange High House in the Mist" doesn't feel much like
Lovecraft's other work for stylistic reasons.
One reason is the mixture of beauty and horror, which isn't matched
anywhere in Lovecraft's canon. Another is the openness of the ending.
Most Lovecraft stories end fairly definitely, with the destruction of
the evil, as in "The Dunwich Horror", or the death of the protagonist,
as in "Dagon" or "The Hound", or some definite event brings down the
curtain. One feels that a chapter has ended. For example, the mystic
amulet in "The Hound" is recovered by its owner, possibly to be stolen
again by some future graverobber, but this series of events is
certainly over.
"The Strange High House in the Mist" feels less certain. While the
final paragraphs sound an ominous tone for the future, the final
paragraph repeats most of the first paragraph (a trick that Shirley
Jackson also uses in _The Haunting of Hill House_), and this makes the
story seem cyclical. Perhaps the closing gloom is misplaced, and this
is simply something that occasionally happens in HPL's fictional
universe. (And can you conceive of a film adaptation of those final
paragraphs that would approximate their impact? I can't, beyond
simply having them read in a voiceover.)
The horror is also one of Lovecraft's sublest; Olney's loss of
personality is slight, not even noticeable by his wife and children.
It may not be typical Lovecraft, but "The Strange High House in the
Mist" is my favorite Lovecraft story.
A.M. Kuchling
a...@magnet.com
http://people.magnet.com/%7Eamk/
Save the Gutenberg Project! http://www.promo.net/pg/nl/pgny_nov96.html
DONALD G. DAVIS
Donovan Loucks <dlo...@primenet.com> writes:
>I find it odd that Lovecraft would choose Mother Ann over
>Magnolia, since the cliffs at Magnolia are more than twice the height of
>those at Mother Ann.
What is the actual height of the cliffs at Magnolia? If I recall
correctly, "Strange High House" had the cliff towering "thousands" of
feet, which is greatly in excess of any real relief on the East Coast.
--Donald Davis
Donovan Loucks
DONALD G. DAVIS <dgd...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
What is the actual height of the cliffs at Magnolia? If I recall
correctly, "Strange High House" had the cliff towering "thousands" of
feet, which is greatly in excess of any real relief on the East Coast.
Yes, the crag in Lovecraft's story is many times taller than anything
along the Massachusetts coast. As he describes this crag, "East and north
it rose thousands of feet vertically from the water...". I have USGS
topographic maps of the coastline all the way from Boston to Newburyport,
and I can't spot any cliff much higher than 30 meters. Essex County,
which has a long shoreline, is relatively flat, and there are many salt
marshes along it.
According to my maps, the cliffs east of Magnolia get up to 20 meters or
more (only about 12 meters at Rafe's Chasm) while those at Mother Ann only
get up to about 6 meters. This was why I found it odd that Lovecraft
would say that "Mother Ann" was as inspiring as the cliffs at Magnolia.
Interestingly enough, Naugus Head, on the Marblehead (Kingsport) peninsula
rises to about 30 meters. It may be the very scaled-down equivalent to
the crag on which "The Strange High House in the Mist" sat--it's occupied
by a radio tower for WESX.
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