TSOU - The Man of Stone
vonj...@hotmail.com
minutes after I turned off the computer for safety's sake the power was
knocked out for eight hours. But here we go -
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Man of Stone"
Sources: The Horror in the Museum, Arkham; The Loved Dead, Carroll and Graf.
Synopsis: Two men decide to go into the Adirondacks to look for their friend,
Arthur Wheeler, a sculptor of some note. They hear that he was staying with
"Mad Dan" Morris, was taken with Morris' wife Rose, and vanished soon
thereafter. They proceed, and find a petrified Arthur in a cavern, as well
as the Morris couple turned to stone in their house. By reading the
expected diary, they discover that Morris turned Wheeler into stone by
using a chemical mixture recorded in the Book of Eibon. He then attempted
to turn Rose, but she - who was in love with Arthur - got free and force-
fed him his own concoction before taking a strong dose herself.
Comments: Ugh. This story didn't do anything for me at all. The chief
problem, IMO, is that this story begins where most tellers would have
ended it. The appearance of the petrified threesome is only mildly
shocking, and then we sit through page upon page of exposition which
does nothing to enhance the mood.
This story is usually credited as a revision of Hazel Heald's work.
S. T. Joshi believes that this was actually one of Lovecraft's works
based on an outline by Heald. I hope he's wrong. At any rate, no one
has found a mention of "The Man of Stone" in any of Lovecraft's letters
- but I doubt those who have a letters database have looked yet.
This tale is set in the Adironacks Mountains, near "Lake Placid"
and the town of "Mountain Top". I thought HPL was being unoriginal at
first - but then I found that there actually is a Lake Placid in New
York, just west of Lake Champlain near the border with Vermont. I
haven't had any success with Mountain Top, but it may have withered
away by now, or not be on my map. I'd be tempted to visit, if it weren't
a six-hour drive each way.
When glancing over this tale again, I couldn't help but wonder if
this tale was poking some fun at HPL's correspondent Clark Ashton Smith.
Smith was a California author and poet who lived in an isolated cabin,
took to sculpting in his spare time, and who was hated by many local
husbands for reasons you can guess. I'm not sure if HPL had any idea
of that last idea, but it is interesting that the tome of eldritch
lore we find in this tale is none other than Smith's own Book of Eibon.
Of course, all this is speculation until, say, I meet someone who has a
Lovecraft letters database.
There are a few mentions of the Mythos in this tale, mostly related
to the Book of Eibon. The only new creation that has carried over from
this story is the Green Decay, with which Glaaki's servitors will become
infected in sunlight (Campbell, "The Inhabitant of the Lake").
Once again, chat at DALnet channel #cthulhu, Sunday at 5:00 EDT.
See you there!
Yrs.,
Daniel "Damn Mad Dog Dan" Harms
http://members.tripod.com/~danharms/
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D.E. Kesler
>
> vonj...@hotmail.com writes:
>
> >"The Man of Stone"
>
> >Synopsis: Two men decide to go into the Adirondacks to look for their friend,
> > They proceed, and find a petrified Arthur in a cavern, as well
> >as the Morris couple turned to stone in their house. By reading the
> >expected diary, they discover that Morris turned Wheeler into stone by
>
> This treads fearsomely close to R.W. Chambers' "The Mask," from the original
> volume of _The King In Yellow_. I'm sure HPL had read Chambers by 1932.
>
> - David Librik
Hello Mr. Librik,
Lovecraft does discuss Chambers in his "Spernatural Horror in
Literature" which he began working on during the later part of 1925.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
D.E. Kesler
>
> Once again, late. Last night, there was a huge thunderstorm, and five
> minutes after I turned off the computer for safety's sake the power was
> knocked out for eight hours. But here we go -
>
> The Shadow over Usenet
> "The Man of Stone"
> Comments: Ugh. This story didn't do anything for me at all. The chief
> problem, IMO, is that this story begins where most tellers would have
> ended it. The appearance of the petrified threesome is only mildly
> shocking, and then we sit through page upon page of exposition which
> does nothing to enhance the mood.
>
> Yrs.,
>
> Daniel "Damn Mad Dog Dan" Harms
Hello Daniel,
I am afraid I mus agree with your assesment of "The Man of Stone." I
have found your own saga with electrical storms far more entertaining
than this revisionist tale.
The one thing that truly frightens me about the "The Man of Stone" is
the fact that it has Lovecraft's name on it. I would hate to think that
someone unfamiliar with Lovecraft might stumble across this tale and
read it before reading anything else.
It's kinda funny. Think about it. Lovecraft never intended for
everyone to know that he was involved in the creation of this piece.
Also, I'm sure that he knew he was involved in crafting a real stinker.
Maybe that's why his letters are so silent on the subject. He knew he
had just created crap, but there was no reason to tell everyone else
about it. After all, his name wasn't attached to it.
Donovan K. Loucks
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Man of Stone"
Comments: Ugh. This story didn't do anything for me at all. The
chief problem, IMO, is that this story begins where most tellers would
have ended it. The appearance of the petrified threesome is only
mildly shocking, and then we sit through page upon page of exposition
which does nothing to enhance the mood.
Then, Donald Eric Kesler <er...@fantasm.org> wrote,
I am afraid I mus agree with your assesment of "The Man of Stone." I
have found your own saga with electrical storms far more entertaining
than this revisionist tale. The one thing that truly frightens me about
the "The Man of Stone" is the fact that it has Lovecraft's name on it.
I would hate to think that someone unfamiliar with Lovecraft might
stumble across this tale and read it before reading anything else.
It's kinda funny. Think about it. Lovecraft never intended for
everyone to know that he was involved in the creation of this piece.
Also, I'm sure that he knew he was involved in crafting a real stinker.
Maybe that's why his letters are so silent on the subject. He knew he
had just created crap, but there was no reason to tell everyone else
about it. After all, his name wasn't attached to it.
Unlike Daniel and Donald, I don't have as harsh a criticism of this story.
Sure, it's garbage compared to Lovecraft's better works, but on its own it
doesn't have any outrageously _bad_ elements. It's about as average as a
story can be, with few good or bad points. That may not sound great, but
that puts it head-and-shoulders above most of today's fiction. I'd sooner
read Lovecraft's crap than [random-popular-horror-writer]'s crap.
Daniel continued:
At any rate, no one has found a mention of "The Man of Stone" in any of
Lovecraft's letters - but I doubt those who have a letters database
have looked yet.
When glancing over this tale again, I couldn't help but wonder if this
tale was poking some fun at HPL's correspondent Clark Ashton Smith.
Of course, all this is speculation until, say, I meet someone who has a
Lovecraft letters database.
Zzzzzz... Huh? What? Oh! Sorry, I must've drifted off there for a
second. Lemme see... Nope. Nothing but a couple of passing references
to "The Man of Stone".
Later, David Librik <lib...@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu> wrote,
This treads fearsomely close to R.W. Chambers' "The Mask," from the
original volume of _The King In Yellow_. I'm sure HPL had read
Chambers by 1932.
Lovecraft first read Robert W. Chambers' _The King in Yellow_ (1895) in
1927 after borrowing the book from W. Paul Cook. This edition did contain
"The Mask" so Lovecraft almost certainly read it. However, he never
mentions "The Mask" in any of his known letters, except in reference to
the Whitman edition (1932?) of the same name, which he apparently never
got his hands on. I will definitely agree with you that the similarities
between these Lovecraft's "The Man of Stone" and Chambers' "The Mask" is
startling. For more great information on Chambers, check out Henrik
Johnsson's "Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow" page at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5582/chambers.html
In spite of the quality of "The Man of Stone" and all these dead ends,
there are still a few interesting tidbits to get out of this tale. And,
since one of my primary interests in Lovecraft is geographic, it's a good
bet these are geographic in nature:
"The soldiers never got his _Book of Eibon_ when they burned his
house, and his grandson, William Van Kauran, brought it over when he
came to Rensselaerwyck and later crossed the river to Esopus. Ask
anybody in Kingston or Hurley about what the William Van Kauran line
could do to people that got in their way." (p. 207-8)
"I found the formula in a manuscript insert opposite page 679 of the
_Book_. From the handwriting I judge it was put there by my great-
grandfather Bareut Picterse Van Kauran -- the one who disappeared from
New Paltz in 1839." (p. 209)
"Seems to me I heard of a man in New Paltz -- Squire Hasbrouck --
turned to stone or something like that in 1834." (p. 209)
Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, Kingston, Hurley, and New Paltz are
Dutch and Huguenot villages midway up the Hudson River Valley in Ulster
County, New York. Lovecraft first visited them in May 1929 when he
traveled with Frank Belknap Long and Long's parents to Kingston to visit
Bernard Austin Dwyer. Kingston has a number of Dutch colonial buildings
-- including the Senate "Ten Broeck" House (1676) and the Dutch Reformed
Church (1852) -- scattered around the western portion of the town. A good
web page with photos of some of these can be found at:
http://int11.mhrcc.org/kingston/
Hurley's stone Dutch houses are nearer each other due to the simple fact
that Hurley is a much smaller village. It's really little more than a
single main street with a number of houses along it. One of the most
prominent houses there is the Van Deusen House (1723) where the state
senate conducted its business after the British burned most of Kingston.
When Lovecraft visited, this building housed an antique shop which he
toured completely. (On the day that Lovecraft visited Hurley he missed
the bus which would take him back to Kingston and then to New Paltz. Not
wanting to miss out on the latter, he hitched a ride back to Kingston --
on a Standard Oil truck!)
In size, New Paltz is somewhere between the previous two towns, being much
smaller than Kingston but still larger than Hurley. The historic district
is at the far west edge of the town, beautifully preserved along the banks
of the Wallkill River. A _wonderful_ page about this historic district
can be found at:
http://www.hvnet.com/museums/huguenotst/index.htm
The stone houses here are along Huguenot Street, so named because those
who settled here in 1677 were Huguenots -- French Protestants who were
fleeing religious persecution (actually, _execution_) in Europe. The
Huguenots were members of a sect begun by John Calvin and were considered
heretics; several thousand of them were killed for their "heresies".
Among these Huguenot houses are the Jean Hasbrouck House (1712) and the
Abraham Hasbrouck House (also 1712), the former of which is open as a
museum, just as it was when Lovecraft visited. I've looked briefly for
"Van Kauran" references but didn't locate anything.
Lovecraft's visit to these three towns so impressed him that he wrote up
his journeys in a long essay called "Travels in the Provinces of America",
which is one of the "Antiquarian Travels" that can be found in Arkham
House's _Miscellaneous Writings_. Lovecraft doesn't seem to have visited
Hurley or New Paltz again, although he did visit Dwyer again in Kingston
in June 1930. It wasn't until the summer of 1932 that Lovecraft wrote
"The Man of Stone", which indicates that these Dutch and Huguenot villages
had some lasting impact on him. The only other story in which Lovecraft
mentions any of these villages is "The Diary of Alonzo Typer":
EDITOR'S NOTE: Alonzo Hasbrouck Typer of Kingston, N.Y., was last seen
and recognised on April 17, 1908, around noon, at the Hotel Richmond in
Batavia. He was the only survivor of an ancient Ulster County family,
and was fifty-three years old at the time of his disappearance. (p.
303)
There's that Hasbrouck name again as well. That should be enough historic
and geographic minutiae for now...
-------------------
Donovan K. Loucks <webm...@hplovecraft.com>
The H.P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.hplovecraft.com
The alt.horror.cthulhu FAQ: ftp://ftp.primenet.com/users/d/dloucks/ahc