An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

American writer and editor; prolific author of tales about psychic detective Jules de Grandin in WT HPL enjoyed his early tale, “The Phantom Farmhouse” ( WT,October 1923), but felt other tales to be formula-ridden hackwork, as evinced in a delightful parody of Quinn’s work (see SL4.162–63). HPL first met Quinn at Wilfred B.Talman’s apartment in New York City on July 6, 1931 (see SL3.382); they met again in early January 1936, during HPL’s last New York visit. Quinn is parodied as “Teaberry Quince” in “The Battle That Ended the Century” (1934). His best Jules de Grandin stories were collected in The Phantom-Fighter(Arkham House, 1966); another collection is Is the Devil a Gentleman?(Mirage Press, 1970).

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R

“Rats in the Walls, The.”

Short story (7,940 words); written late August or early September 1923. First published in WT(March 1924); rpt. WT (June 1930); first collected in O; corrected text in DH;annotated version in An1and CC

A Virginian of British ancestry, a man named Delapore (his first name is not given), decides to spend his latter years in refurbishing and occupying his ancestral estate in southern England, Exham Priory, whose foundations extend to a period even before the Roman conquest of the first century C.E. Delapore spares no expense in the restoration and proudly moves into his estate on July 16, 1923. He has reverted to the ancestral spelling of his name, de la Poer, despite the fact that the family has a very unsavory reputation with the local population for murder, kidnapping, witchcraft, and other anomalies extending to the time of the first Baron Exham in 1261. Associated with the house or the family is the “dramatic epic of the rats—the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent.”

All this seems merely conventional ghostly legendry, and de la Poer pays no attention to it. But shortly after his occupancy of Exham Priory, odd things begin to happen; in particular, he and his several cats seem to detect the scurrying of rats in the walls of the structure, even though such a thing is absurd in light of the centuries-long desertion of the place. The scurrying seems to descend to the basement of the edifice, and one night de la Poer and his friend, Capt. Edward Norrys, spend a night there to see if they can discern the mystery. De la Poer wakes to hear the scurrying of the rats continuing “ still downward,far underneath this deepest of sub-cellars,” but Norrys hears nothing. When they come upon a trapdoor leading to a cavern beneath the basement, they decide to call in scientific specialists to investigate the matter. As the explorers descend into the nighted crypt, they come upon an awesome and horrific sight—an enormous expanse of bones: “Like a foamy sea they stretched, some fallen apart, but others wholly or

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partly articulated as skeletons; these latter invariably in postures of daemoniac frenzy, either fighting off some menace or clutching some other forms with cannibal intent.” When de la Poer finds that some bones have rings bearing his own coat of arms, he realizes the truth—his family has been the leaders of an ancient cannibalistic witch-cult that had its origins in primitive times—and he experiences a spectacular evolutionary reversal: speaking successively in archaic English, Middle English, Latin, Gaelic, and primitive ape-cries, he is found crouching over the half-eaten form of Capt. Norrys.

In a late letter HPL states that the story was “suggested by a very commonplace incident—the cracking of wall-paper late at night, and the chain of imaginings resulting from it” ( SL5.181), but this specific image does not occur in the story. HPL recorded the kernel of the idea in his commonplace book: “Wall paper cracks off in sinister shape—man dies of fright” (#107). And yet, an earlier entry (#79) is also suggestive: “Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle—discovered by dweller.” HPL first submitted the tale to Argosy All-Story Weekly,a Munsey magazine whose managing editor, Robert H.Davis, rejected it as being (in HPL’s words) “too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick” ( SL1.259).