An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

American author. HPL discovered his early fantastic writing— The King in Yellow(1895), The Maker of Moons(1896), In Search of the Unknown(1904); also the later novel The Slayer of Souls(1920)—in early 1927, and he hastily updated “Supernatural Horror in Literature” just prior to publication to include a discussion of this work. Other weird works (not, apparently, read by HPL) include The Mystery of Choice(1897), The Tracer of Lost Persons(1906), The Tree of Heaven(1907), and The Talkers(1923). Chambers borrowed mythical names—Hastur, Carcosa, etc.—from Bierce; some of these (along with such of Chambers’ s own inventions as Yian) were in turn borrowed by HPL. “The Harbor-Master” (a separate short story later incorporated as the opening chapters of the episodic novel In Search of the Unknown) may have influenced “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Chambers later became a best-selling writer of sentimental romances.

See Lee Weinstein, “Chambers and The King in Yellow,” RomantistNo. 3 (1979): 51–57; S.T.Joshi, “Robert W.Chambers,” CryptNo. 22 (Roodmas 1984): 26–33, 17.

Chandraputra, Swami.

In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” he attends the meeting to divide Randolph Carter’s estate, purportedly with information about what happened to Carter following Carter’s disappearance. The Swami is actually a disguise for Zkauba the Wizard from the planet Yaddith, whom Carter became after he passed through the Gate of Dreams. The Swami is also mentioned briefly in “Out of the Charging Buffalo.

In “The Mound,” a young buck who in 1541 guides Panfilo de Zamacona to the entrance of a mound in what is now Oklahoma, but refuses to accompany Zamacona within. Some time earlier he had tentatively explored the mound, and he tells Zamacona tales of the Old Ones living within. Choynski, Paul.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” an occupant of the Witch House in Arkham during the period of Walter Gilman’s bizarre dreams and sleepwalking.

“City, The.”

Poem (45 lines in 9 stanzas); probably written in the fall of 1919. First published in Vagrant(October 1919); rpt. WT(July 1950).

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The narrator finds himself in a strange but splendid city and strives to remember when and how he had known it before; finally a revelation comes to him and he “flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.”

See Dirk W.Mosig, “Poet of the Unconscious,” Platte Valley Review6, No. 1 (April 1978): 60–66. Clapham-Lee, Major Sir Eric Moreland, D.S.O.

In “Herbert West—Reanimator,” a surgeon who dies when his plane is shot down as it is approaching a base in Flanders where Herbert West is stationed with a Canadian regiment. As Clapham-Lee is nearly decapitated in the plane crash, West perversely reanimates the head and the body separately. Later Clapham-Lee exacts his vengeance on West.

Clarendon, Dr. Alfred Schuyler.

In “The Last Test,” a physician who is appointed medical director of the San Quentin Penitentiary by the governor but is later removed because of his handling of the case of a prisoner stricken with black fever, whose death prompts fear of an epidemic in San Francisco. Clarendon is in fact not trying to find a cure for black fever at all, but—under the evil influence of the mysterious Surama, who acts as his assistant—is attempting to produce a serum that will induce a disease that will kill all humankind. He tries to inject his sister, Georgina, with the serum; prevented from doing so, he injects himself instead. Fearing the outcome, he destroys himself and his clinic by fire. Clark, Franklin Chase, M.D. (1847–1915).