An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Antoine, last of the Comtes de C——, tells the tale of his life and ancestry. This ancient aristocratic line has occupied a lofty castle in France surrounded by a dense forest, but a deadly curse seems to weigh upon it. Antoine finally learns the apparent cause when he comes of age and reads a manuscript passed down through the generations. In the thirteenth century an ancient man, Michel (“usually designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his sinister reputation”), dwelt on the estate together with his son Charles, nicknamed Le Sorcier. These two practiced the black arts, and it was rumored they sought the elixir of life. Many disappearances of children were attributed to them. When Godfrey, the young son of Henri the Comte, is missing, Henri accosts Michel and kills him in a rage; just then Godfrey is found, and Charles, who learns of the deed, pronounces a curse:

May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line

Survive to reach a greater age than thine!

He thrusts a vial in the face of Henri, who dies instantly. From that time on no comte of the line lives beyond the age of thirty-two, Henri’s age when he died. This curse continues for hundreds of years, and Antoine is compelled to believe that he will suffer a similar fate. Wandering in his deserted castle, he finds a hidden cellar and encounters a hideous looking man “clad in a skull-cap and long mediaeval tunic of dark colour.” The man tells how Charles Le Sorcier killed Henri and also Godfrey when the latter reached Henri’s age; but Antoine wonders how the curse could have been continued thereafter, “when Charles Le Sorcier must in the course of Nature have died.” As the man attacks Antoine, the

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latter hurls a torch at him, setting him afire. Just before he expires, however, he reveals the truth: he himself is Charles Le Sorcier, having lived for 600 years to continue his revenge against the family that killed his father.

This is the first extant tale by HPL to be avowedly supernatural. It was first published at the urging of W.Paul Cook, who read it in manuscript and found it indicative of great promise; largely at Cook’s urging, HPL resumed the writing of fiction in 1917.

Alfredo; a Tragedy.

Verse drama (411 lines); dated September 14, 1918, as by “Beaumont and Fletcher” (i.e., John Fletcher [1579–1625] and Francis Beaumont [c. 1585–1616], the Jacobean dramatists). First published in DB.

The play is a send-up of Alfred Galpin’s high school romances, written in the form of an Elizabethan tragedy. Alfredo (Galpin), the Prince Regent, yearns for Margarita (Margaret Abraham), but she claims to find him too studious for her “airy will”; nevertheless, she becomes jealous when she sees him spending much time studying with Hypatia. She and Hecatissa (an unattractive woman previously scorned by Alfredo) plot together to gain revenge. During the presentation of a play in which Alfredo and Hypatia, now engaged, act in the presence of King Rinarto (Rheinhart Kleiner), Alfredo and Hypatia drink from a goblet that has been poisoned by Hecatissa; they lie dying. In a rage, Gonzago perceives the trickery and kills Hecatissa; her father, Olero, kills Gonzago; Teobaldo (HPL), Alfredo’s tutor, kills Olero; Margarita kills Teobaldo; Alfredo, in his death throes, manages to stab and kill Margarita; Rinarto, in grief, drinks from the goblet and dies, leaving Mauricio (Maurice W.Moe), a Cardinal, to lament the tragedy and count his beads.

Allen, Zadok (1831–1927).

In “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” the alcoholic nonagenarian of Innsmouth who, when plied with liquor by Robert Olmstead, babbles the town’s horrible secrets and then disappears mysteriously. It is from Allen that Olmstead first learns that he has the “Marsh eyes”—hinting at his kinship with Old Man Marsh. Allen shares the life dates of, and bears a strong resemblance to, the amateur poet Jonathan E.Hoag, with whom HPL had been acquainted since 1918. Allen may also have been suggested by the character Humphrey Lathrop, the elderly doctor in Herbert Gorman’s The Place Called Dagon(1927).

Alos.

In “Polaris,” the narrator’s friend, commander of the last forces of the Lomarians against the Inutos. Altberg-Ehrenstein, Karl Heinrich, Graf von.

The narrator of “The Temple.” The Lieutenant-Commander of the German submarine U-29, he is the last surviving crew member when his stricken vessel sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where he apparently finds the ruins of Atlantis. He leaves behind his written account on August 20, 1917— HPL’s twenty-seventh birthday.

Amateur Journalism.

The amateur journalism movement consisted of various groups of writers belonging to the two leading amateur organizations of the pe