[TSOU] "The Shadow over Innsmouth"
Donovan K. Loucks
at the time, "The Shadow over Innsmouth". Well, not a single person
responded to that message. In fact, only three people (Daniel Harms, Alan
Peschke, and myself) participated in the discussion of that story. This
absolutely baffles me, since I consider "The Shadow over Innsmouth" to be
one of Lovecraft's finest tales. So, I'm posting the exact same message
again in the hopes of generating some more discussion on this great tale.
Yes, I _am_ crazy. What took you so long to figure that one out?
Daniel Harms <vonj...@hotmail.com> wrote,
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Shadow over Innsmouth"
Sources: _The Dunwich Horror and Others_, Arkham; _The Best of H. P.
Lovecraft_, Ballantine; _Crawling Chaos_, Creation.
Another great source is Necronomicon Press' version, annotated by S.T.
Joshi and David E. Schultz and illustrated by Jason Eckhardt. It was
originally published in chapbook form but has since been slightly revised
and re-printed as a perfect-bound paperback. This book points out quite a
few behind-the-scenes facts, such as the narrator's name (Robert Olmstead)
which Lovecraft mentions in his notes for the tale. Still, it could use a
couple of minor corrections, among them Rockport's Gap Head is incorrectly
mentioned as "Cap" Head and the headland named Mother Ann _does_ exist,
despite Peter Cannon's opinion to the contrary in his otherwise great "In
Search of Lovecraft's Newburyport".
Since it's loaded with New England atmosphere "The Shadow over Innsmouth"
has become one of my favorite Lovecraft tales, and it's the favorite of my
wife, Pam. Several times we've made the trip along Massachusetts' Highway
1A and Route 133 from Newburyport to Gloucester (and back again), passing
through Rowley, Ipswich, and Essex along the way. This region is very
sandy and covered with many salt marshes, just as Lovecraft describes.
It's also very flat, which makes Lovecraft's "deafening" falls along the
"gorge" of the Manuxet very much out of place.
Innsmouth originally appeared in "Celephais", though it appeared to be
set in England there.
Innsmouth also appears in two of the sonnets in "Fungi from Yuggoth" where
it's clearly set in New England. You can find the complete text to "Fungi
from Yuggoth" on Ricardo Maderia's pages at:
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/8164/Fungi.html
For the sonnets that mention Innsmouth, check out "The Port" (sonnet VIII)
and "The Bells" (sonnet XIX).
This story's Innsmouth, according to Joshi, is an amalgamation of the
New England towns of Newburyport and Gloucester. I've never been to
either, so I'll see if someone who has been there would like to
comment.
I can understand why someone might see more similarities between Innsmouth
and modern Gloucester than they would between Innsmouth and modern
Newburyport. Modern Gloucester has more of the run-down look than modern
Newburyport does, but it's still a thriving fishing village. Modern
Newburyport is a beautiful seaside village with a restored Market Square
that serves as the town's center of tourism. But in 1923 Market Square
was run down to the point of nearly being abandoned:
All at once the car reached a spacious square, lined on every side with
the quaint brick mercantile buildings of the Revolutionary period. It
was a sight such as we had never seen before -- a city business section
of the 18th century, preserved in every detail. As the car passed on,
entering again a delicious maze of ancient streets & turning almost
every corner in sight, we wondered when we should reach the modern
business section; but after a time the houses thinned out & we found
ourselves speeding past the shanties . . . of fishermen toward the salt
marshes of the open country to the south, with the sand-choked harbour
on our left, & the long stretch of Plum Island in the distance beyond.
Then we questioned the driver, & discovered the truth of a suspicion
which had crossed our minds but fleetingly before. It was really so --
that Georgian business section was in the truth the business section of
today as well! (Letter to Samuel Loveman dated 29 April 1923)
Your family link with Newburyport will doubtless heighten your interest
in the "Innsmouth" story. Newburyport is a strange old city -- half-
deserted by its former industries, and with that air of sleepy hush and
partial desertion typical of a town which has lost about half its
population since its heyday. The harbour is half-filled with drifting
sand, the wharves and marine warehouses are moss-grown and ruinous,
whole blocks of vacant shops can be found in water-front streets, and
certain sections are almost completely uninhabited, with long rows of
200-year-old houses boarded up and condemned. The business blocks of
the main section are quaint, slant-roofed affairs put up just after the
great fire of 1811, and there are some fine old churches with white
Georgian steeples -- in one of which the famous evangelist George
Whitefield is buried. Far back from the waterfront is stately High
St., with the great mansions of the colonial gentry and early-republic
ship-owners. Newburyport was a great maritime centre around 1800 --
the period in which it harboured the famous eccentric "Lord" Timothy
Dexter, about whom you have doubtless heard or read.... There is no
place quite like Newbuyport -- for its retarded business life has
preserved its sleepy antique flavour to an astonishing extent. It
would form a rival to Marblehead if it were less regular in topography
and layout, and if its houses were quite as old and quaint as those of
the smaller part. In some ways it conveys a better impression of early
America than does Salem or Gloucester.... It is one of my favourite
towns -- a sleepy little city full of ancient houses and looking much
as it did a century ago. It is precisely the sort of place I write
about so often in my tales -- and indeed, in "The Shadow Over
Innsmouth" I mention it by name and speak of many of its streets.
(Letter to Mrs. Herlow (Harold?) H. Hughes dated 1936)
It was this Newburyport waterfront of over 60 years ago that inspired
Lovecraft's creation of Innsmouth, not the Newburyport of today. Joshi
and Schultz' comments on Innsmouth's relationship to Gloucester are
probably based more on Will Murray's "I Found Innsmouth!" (_Crypt of
Cthulhu_ No. 57) article than they are on his own findings.
Will's article, like his other articles on Lovecraftian geography, begins
by saying that Innsmouth (or Arkham or Kingsport) cannot be Newburyport
(or Salem or Marblehead) because _both_ the real and fictional towns are
mentioned in Lovecraft's stories. But Lovecraft never says in his letters
that his fictional towns are _identical_ to the real towns, but instead
are _based_ on them. Here are two examples of Will's logic:
If Innsmouth were really simply a disguised Newburyport, then the
narrator of that story could not possibly board a bus _in_ Newburyport
to travel south to Innsmouth. ("In Search of Arkham Country",
_Lovecraft Studies_, No. 13, p. 55)
My theory was predicated on a simple fact. The narrator of the story
boards a bus in Newburyport in order to reach Innsmouth. Therefore,
Innsmouth, while inspired by Newburyport, sits on the site of another
place entirely. ("I Found Innsmouth!", _Crypt of Cthulhu_, Vol. 7, No.
7, p. 10)
Nowhere in his letters does Lovecraft say that any of his fictional towns
are at the same location as any real-world towns. Instead, he says that
his towns are "suggested by" or are an "exaggeration of" real ones. Now,
don't get me wrong -- Will's a terrific guy and he's done a great deal of
very interesting work in Lovecraftian geography, but this line of "logic"
doesn't sit well with me. Will says that Innsmouth can't be Newburyport
because the latter really exists, and yet he then goes on to postulate
that Innsmouth is Gloucester -- another real place.
Will's article also points out some coincidences that he believes are
significant. For example, several of the street names in Innsmouth can
also be found in Gloucester. However, the street names in Innsmouth are
so common that they can be found in numerous New England towns. The 21
street names mentioned in "The Shadow over Innsmouth" are Adams, Babson,
Bank, Bates, Broad, Church, Eliot, Fall, Federal, Fish, Lafayette, Main,
Marsh, Martin, Paine, River, South, State, Waite, Washington, and Water.
Searching Microsoft's Streets98 I found that Gloucester has only 8 of
these streets (Adams, Babson, Church, Federal, Main, Marsh, River, and
Washington), while the town of Newburyport, which Will seems bent on
ignoring, has 10 of them (Adams, Broad, Federal, Lafayette, Main, Marsh,
River, State, Washington, and Water). [Footnote 78 of Joshi and Schultz'
annotated version says that "There is a Fish Street in Gloucester", but
I've never been able to find it...] Even Salem and Danvers have 11 of
these street names, while Fall River, Haverhill, and Marlborough have _14_
of them. Clearly, this line of argument does nothing to demonstrate that
Gloucester was Lovecraft's inspiration for Innsmouth, although one might
be able to argue that he took his street names from Haverhill...
(By the way, as a result of all this searching for street names, I've
discovered that there are a dozen streets in the US named after Dunwich,
and even an Arkham Way in Milford, Michigan. There's also a Loucraft
Avenue in Brockton, Massachusetts.)
Other similarities that Will notes are the Legion Memorial Hall and the
Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House. The Legion Memorial Hall is "a large
pillared hall" which does still have a "black and gold sign on the
pediment" and a rotary of sorts in front of it. You can see my own
photograph of it at:
http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/sites/mass.htm#Gloucester
A description of this building and its surroundings does sound somewhat
like the Esoteric Order of Dagon Hall in Innsmouth, and yet I can't help
but think that this is pure coincidence. The area in front of the Legion
Memorial Hall is a square of sorts with a statue of Joan of Arc in its
center -- not at all "the bedraggled remains of a circular green". But,
the two rotaries just north of Gloucester may have piqued Lovecraft's
interest since rotaries are quite common in Massachusetts but rare in
Rhode Island.
Will also thinks that the Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House may have been
Lovecraft's inspiration for the Gilman House hotel and the character of
Joe Sargent. However, the Gilman House hotel is _5_ stories tall and has
at least 28 rooms per floor (the narrator stays in room 428), while the
Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House is a three-story home. Will even goes
so far to connect the gabled windows on the real house to the "cupola-
crowned" Gilman House hotel, as if Lovecraft didn't know the difference
between these two different architectural elements.
Lovecraft didn't need a real-world house to provide his inspiration for
the name of a fictional hotel. Names like Sargent and Gilman (and Babson,
Waite, Eliot, Pierce, and Garrison) are very common in Essex County and
the Cape Ann peninsula. All Lovecraft needed to do was pick one of those
names and fashion a hotel from it. He did the same thing with the names
Derby and Crowninshield in "The Thing on the Doorstep", and yet people
point to the Elias Haskett Derby and Crowninshield-Bentley houses of Salem
as his inspiration (the Clifford Crowninshield house would be a better
candidate if I thought Lovecraft needed a real-world counterpart to the
fictional Crowninshield house). These two homes are _now_ the most
prominent houses associated with the names Derby and Crowninshield, and so
draw the attention of Lovecraftian geographers. Perhaps the _Gilman_
House hotel is nothing more than a pun...
One article that I was surprised to find somewhat more convincing is Tani
Jantsang's "Trip to Innsmouth" (_Crypt of Cthulhu_, Vol. 13, No. 1), in
spite of its disjointed and rambling nature. In that article, Tani drives
along the coast from Newburyport to Rockport, discovers the breakwater out
in Rockport's Sandy Bay, and comes to the conclusion that it must have
been Lovecraft's inspiration for Devil's Reef. Having seen the breakwater
for myself, I must admit that it's pretty compelling. It was built in
1885 on top of a reef (Avery Ledge) that's one-and-a-half miles out from
Rockport, but was abandoned when the money to build it ran out. It's now
a serious hazard to navigation and appears exactly as I would expect
Lovecraft's Devil's Reef to look.
In short, I think that Will's coincidental findings have steered him (and
other Lovecraftians) wrong. If they could be transported back to the
Newburyport of Lovecraft's day they'd probably change their minds on the
matter. Perhaps they should just take Lovecraft at his word:
The plot I am now experimenting on concerns another fictitious Mass.
town -- "Innsmouth" -- which is vaguely suggested by the ancient &
almost dead city of Newburyport. (Letter to August Derleth dated 14
November 1931)
My scene will not be called Newburyport, but will be the accursed
sea-town of _Innsmouth_, between Newburyport and Arkham. (Letter to
Clark Ashton Smith dated 20 November 1931)
My new "Innsmouth" is an attempt to get on paper my reaction to the
dead, decaying seaports of the New England coast, of which Newburyport,
Mass. is the supreme type. (Letter to Clark Ashton Smith dated 28
January 1932)
I am indeed glad you liked "Innsmouth" -- whose locale you can in some
measure visualise after having seen Newport & Marblehead, although
Newburyport is more particularly my model. (Letter to Donald Wandrei
dated 8 March 1932)
"Innsmouth" reflects a sort of exaggeration of ancient Newburyport,
Mass., whose increasing quiescence & depopulation are getting to be
almost spectral. (Letter to Robert Bloch dated 9 May 1933)
"Innsmouth", as I possibly mentioned last time, is an exaggeration of
Newburyport, Mass. (Letter to Robert Bloch dated late May 1933)
Couldn't get to Newburyport (Innsmouth) this time. (Letter to E.
Hoffmann Price dated 19 September 1933)
After that comes "The Shadow over Innsmouth" -- written in November
1931 as a sort of echo to a Newburyport trip which I took with W. Paul
Cook in the preceding month. (Letter to F. Lee Baldwin dated 29 April
1934)
The "Innsmouth" story was suggested by the ancient & decaying town of
Newburyport, Mass. (Letter to F. Lee Baldwin dated 27 July 1934)
"Innsmouth" is a considerably twisted version of Newburyport, Mass.
(Letter to Emil Petaja dated 29 December 1934)
As a study in lurking, insidious _regional_ horror it [Gustav Meyrink's
_The Golem_] has scarcely a peer -- doing for the antient, crumbling
Prague ghetto what I unsuccessfully strove to do for rotting
Newburyport in _The Shadow over Innsmouth_... (Letter to James F.
Morton dated 4 April 1935)
As a study in lurking, insidious _regional_ horror it [Gustav Meyrink's
_The Golem_] has scarcely a peer -- doing for the ancient, crumbling
Prague ghetto what I unsuccessfully tried to do for rotting Newburyport
in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". (Letter to August Derleth dated 13
April 1935)
As a study in lurking, insidious _regional_ horror it [Gustav Meyrink's
_The Golem_] has no peer -- doing for the ancient, crumbling Prague
ghetto what I unsuccessfully tried to do for rotting Newburyport in
"The Shadow over Innsmouth". (Letter to Duane Rimel dated 16 April
1935)
As a study in lurking, insidious _regional_ horror it [Gustav Meyrink's
_The Golem_] has scarcely a peer -- doing for the ancient, crumbling
Prague ghetto what I unsuccessfully tried to do for rotting Newburyport
in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". (Letter to Richard F. Searight dated
16 April 1935)
Salem is, very roughly (though it has no college) the prototype of my
imaginary "Arkham" -- just as Marblehead is of "Kingsport" &
Newburyport of "Innsmouth". (Letter to Henry Kuttner dated 16 February
1936)
Roughly speaking, "Innsmouth" (an exaggeration of quaint decaying
Newburyport) is supposed to be on the marshy coast a bit south of the
real Newburyport. (Letter to Fritz Leiber dated 9 November 1936)
How can one ignore all that evidence? (By the way, those four nearly
identical comments to Morton, Derleth, Rimel, and Searight are an example
of how Lovecraft would copy the contents of his letters to a variety of
correspondents in an effort to save time.)
So, where do _I_ think Innsmouth is? Well, it's certainly not in this
world, since the world that it exists in _clearly_ has a number of
differences from ours, despite a variety of similarities. In that world
I'd place it between and to the east of Rowley and Ipswich, since the
narrator mentions the "abandoned railway to Rowley...stretched off to the
northwest" and "the narrow road to Ipswich" was to the southwest ("on the
left" as he looked out his west-facing hotel room window). And, to follow
Lovecraft's description, I'd have to shorten Plum Island by a full three
miles and then I'd have to throw in the Manuxet as well. As you can see,
pinpointing the "real" location of a fictional city is rather pointless...
By the way, Joseph Morales' "Tourist's Guide to Innsmouth" is a very
thorough analysis of the geography and streets of Innsmouth. You can find
this guide and an extrapolated map of Innsmouth at:
http://users.deltanet.com/~lumiere/mythos/innsmth.htm
Lastly, Daniel continued:
The shoggoths from "At the Mountains of Madness" and the Phoenician god
Dagon are mentioned...
That would be the _Philistine_ god Dagon who is part man and part fish. I
wouldn't want any of the Philistines around here to get irked. You know
how they can get...
-------------------
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
D.E. Kesler
>
> Two weeks ago I posted a lengthy article on the story we were discussing
> at the time, "The Shadow over Innsmouth". Well, not a single person
> responded to that message. In fact, only three people (Daniel Harms, Alan
> Peschke, and myself) participated in the discussion of that story. This
> absolutely baffles me, since I consider "The Shadow over Innsmouth" to be
> one of Lovecraft's finest tales. So, I'm posting the exact same message
> again in the hopes of generating some more discussion on this great tale.
> Yes, I _am_ crazy. What took you so long to figure that one out?
>
Hello Mr. Loucks,
On the strength of your essay, I am completely convinced that Newbury
Port was indeed Lovecraft's primary source of inspiration for Innsmouth.
In your post, you deftly anticipated and responded to every possible
view to the contrary with precise logic and brilliant erudition. At the
risk of seeming more cliche than usual, I will say this about your post.
It left no room for discussion.
This is why I did not respond to your post when it initially appeared.
I felt, and still feel, that there is very little I could write that
would expand upon your statements. You said it all.
Of course, there is one thing that I should have written when your paper
was first posted. If you will allow, I shall strive to rectify my
initial oversite.
Well done, good sir. Your efforts have served to further illuminate us
all. Thank you for the time and the effort you invested. Your work, as
it always has, truly honors the memory of Howard Philips Lovecraft.
Regards and Best Wishes,
Donald Eric Kesler
D.E. Kesler
I have recently had a strange series of interesting and unorthodox
thoughts on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Please bear in mind that this
post is not intended as an essay on what Lovecraft intended. Instead it
should be viewed as an excercise in creative speculation. With this in
mind, please consider the following excerpt from Zadok Allen's drunken
spiel.
"Wal, it's this - it ain't what them fish devils _hez done, but what
they're a-goin to do!_ They're bringing things up aout o' whar they
come from into the taown - been doin' it fer years, an' slackenin' up
lately. Them haouses north o' the river betwixt Water an' Main Streets
is full of 'em - them devils _an what the brung_ - an' when they git
ready....I say, _when they git ready... ever hear tell of a shoggoth..."
(DH, 340)
I have been wondering for some time about the appearance of Shoggoths in
this tale. Then I noticed the following passage from the end of the
tale.
"The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the paleogean magic
of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present
they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again
for the tribute great Cthulhu craved." (DH, 367)
This passage is an obvious allusion to the war between the Cthulhu spawn
and the Old Ones which Lovecraft described in _At the Mountains of
Maddness_ . Please bear in mind that Lovecraft wrote "The Shadow Over
Innsmouth" only a few months after he wrote _At the Mountains of
Maddness_ . Unfortunately, the Deep Ones do not quite fit the
description of the Cthulhu spawn.
"Another race - a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably
corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu - soon began
filtering down from cosmic infinity and precipitated a monstrous war
which for a time drove the Old Ones wholly back to the sea - a colossal
blow in view of the increasing land settlements. Later peace was made,
and the new lands were given to the Cthulhu spawn whilst the Old Ones
held the sea and other lands." (MM, 66)
This passage seems to suggest that the spawn of Cthulhu were ill
equipped to wage a war beneath the waves. (So much for Dereleth's water
elemental theory.)
At the risk of attributing human motivation to Great Cthulhu, I would
like to suggest the following possability. Cthulhu, aware of this
strategic lacuna, might have began a program of genetic engineering in
order to fill this void. Not only does this theory serve to explain the
existance of the Deep Ones, but it would also explain why the Old Ones
were attempting to thwart their efforts in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
Assuming that the Deep Ones were created to fight the Old Ones also
sheds some light on the pressence of the Shoggoths, the "one shadowy
fear about the which they [the Old Ones] did not like to speak." (MM,
66) The Shoggoths, at some point in the past, may have recieved aid and
support from Cthulhu in their rebellion against their creators, the Old
Ones. Thus their apperance in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" could be
viewed as a sign of reciprocity.
Let us return to the intoxicated mumbling of Zadok Allen. He mentions
his fears about what the Deep Ones are preparing to do. Traditionally,
it has been assumed that the Deep Ones were about to take over the world
or at least make further encroachments. This strikes me as homocentric
as my thoughts on Cthulhu's motives for creating Deep Ones.
Also, Zadok mentions houses full of Deep Ones and Shoggoths. How many
Shoggoths do you need to fight mere humans? Let us consider the
following possablity instead. What if the Deep Ones were preparing
their own expedition to Anarctica?
I will leave you with this final thought. Would it not be ironic for
Mighty Cthulhu to threaten the Old Ones with their former slaves and an
altered version of their own joke.
Donovan K. Loucks
I felt, and still feel, that there is very little I could write that
would expand upon your statements. You said it all.
Then, Alan D. Peschke <ala...@texas.not> wrote,
As Mr. Kesler said, you pretty much said it all, Donovan.
Well, I have to say that I do appreciate your comments, guys. I suspect
that a number of my long-winded posts result in opinions similar to yours,
but it's nice to get some confirmation of that once in a while. For that
matter, I'd prefer opposing opinions rather than silence! At least some
opposition would either change my mind or help further cement my ideas.
I was kind of hoping that someone would grab their copy of _Crypt of
Cthulhu_ No. 57, read Will Murray's article, and proceed to defend it.
I'm very open to having my views on Lovecraftian geography (or anything
else!) repudiated, since I'd rather believe what's correct than what I
want to believe. In fact, I'm such a skeptic that I often wonder if I'm
being too skeptical when I shouldn't be. I have a lot of theories about
Lovecraftian geography that I'm still not certain about (and may never
be), yet many others would have been convinced by the evidence by now.
I was also hoping to get some feedback on my notion that Lovecraft didn't
require real-world houses and places as models for his fictional ones.
While it is clear from Lovecraft's letters that Salem, Newburyport,
Wilbraham, and Marblehead were his inspirations for Arkham, Innsmouth,
Dunwich, and Kingsport, he never says they're identical. So, making
connections between fictional and real houses (like the Gilman House Hotel
and the Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House) seems like an unnecessary step
to me -- a step that diminishes the greatness of Lovecraft's imagination.
Also, regardless of whether anyone responded to _my_ post or not, I was
rather surprised at the lack of posts about a story that I consider one of
Lovecraft's finest. "The Dreams in the Witch House" is getting far more
posts than I ever would have expected, while "The Shadow over Innsmouth"
got far fewer. Maybe Daniel, Alan, Donald, and I really _did_ say all
there was to say on the subject! Hmmm... Something tells me that's not
exactly very likely.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback you two -- I appreciate all your kind and
generous comments!
Jordi Espunya
"Donovan K. Loucks" <webm...@hplovecraft.com> said:
>Well, I have to say that I do appreciate your comments, guys. I suspect
>that a number of my long-winded posts result in opinions similar to yours,
>but it's nice to get some confirmation of that once in a while.
I thought that posting "Bravo!" or "Me too" would be annoying, if I
had nothing new to say about your post. So I shut my big mouth. <g>
>I'm very open to having my views on Lovecraftian geography (or anything
>else!) repudiated, since I'd rather believe what's correct than what I
>want to believe.
Hmm. I think maybe L-geography or L-space ;) is questionable...
always.
I recently explained to a friend of mine the thread we'd here a year
or so ago about where "The Music of Eric Zan" happened.
Did you people know in which hotel was filmed "The Shinning" from
Mr.Kubrick? It was shot at several different hotels. One room of one
place, one room of another.
I just think HPL could mix places he knew with fictional ones. In "The
Music" I think he had to do it, because I think he never went to a
french-speaking place with hills and step streets.
---
/The fate that came to Useneth: Jordi Espunya >> j_es...@redestb.es \
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. No, it's not ROT13!
\Use our special Hounds-of-Tindalos beta software to deal with spammers/