An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In “The Very Old Folk,” the military tribune of the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion in the Roman province of Hispania Citerior (Spain), who is ordered to investigate reports of peculiar events in the hills above Tarraco.

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“Ashes.”

Short story (3,220 words); written in collaboration with C.M.Eddy, Jr., probably in the fall of 1923. First published in WT(March 1924); first collected in HM(rev. ed. 1989 only).

A scientist, Arthur Van Allister, has discovered a chemical compound that will reduce any substance to fine white ashes. He hires an assistant, Malcolm Bruce, who quickly falls in love with Van Allister’s secretary, Marjorie Purdy. Sometime later Bruce is alarmed that Marjorie seems to have disappeared. He enters Van Allister’s laboratory and sees a glass jar filled with white ashes. Horrified at the thought that the scientist has tried out his experiment on his secretary, Bruce tussles with Van Allister, in the course of which he lowers the scientist into the vat containing his formula. Later it is discovered that Marjorie had merely been locked in a closet; but since Van Allister had been planning to destroy Marjorie with his formula, his death is presumably justified.

No one would know that HPL had had any hand in this story (which, aside from the general triteness of the plot, features a conventional romance element very foreign to his own manner) if HPL had not said so (see SL1.257). It is the first of HPL’s revisions of tales by C.M.Eddy; he presumably touched up a draft by Eddy rather than writing from notes or a synopsis.

Aspinwall, Ernest B. (b. 1873).

Randolph Carter’s older cousin, Aspinwall is mentioned briefly in “The Silver Key.” In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” he represents Carter’s heirs as one of the men who attempt to settle Carter’s estate following his disappearance. An “L.Aspinwall” was Treasurer and a Director with Whipple V.Phillips (HPL’s grandfather) of Phillips’s Snake River Company.

Astrology, Articles on.

Six articles written in late 1914 for the [Providence] Evening Newsto combat the astrological articles of J.F.Hartmann. All articles (including those by Hartmann) rpt. Science vs. Charlatanry: Essays on Astrology(Strange Co., 1979). They are: Letter to the editor (September 9; as “Science Versus Charlatanry”); Letter to the editor (October 10; as “The Falsity of Astrology”); Letter to the editor (October 13; as “Astrlogh [sic]and the Future“ [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]); ”Delavan’s Comet and Astrology“ (October 26 [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]); Letter to the editor (December 17; as “The Fall of Astrology”); Letter to the editor (December 21 [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]).

HPL was irked when the local astrologer Joachim Friedrich Hartmann (1848–1930) published an article in the Evening News,“Astrology and the European War” (September 9), in the exact location (the top of the last page) where HPL’s astronomy columns typically appeared. HPL replied with two hostile and intemperate letters, to the first of which Hartmann replied with a letter of his own (published October 7). HPL then employed the satirical method of Jonathan Swift, who in his “Isaac Bickerstaffe” articles predicted the death of the astrologer Partridge and then wrote a convincing account of Partridge’s death, whereupon Partridge had a difficult time proving he was still alive; HPL’s pieces merely parody astrological technique by making vague and absurd predictions of the distant future. Hartmann feebly rejoined with two further pieces—“The Science of Astrology” (October 22) and “A Defense of Astrology” (December 14)—in which he ridiculed the Bickerstaffe pieces, unaware that HPL had written them.

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Astronomy, Articles on. See “Mysteries of the Heavens Revealed by Astronomy”; Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner,Astronomy Articles for; [Providence] Evening News,Astronomy Articles for; [Providence] Tribune,Astronomy Articles for.

Astronomy/The Monthly Almanack.