See Will Murray, “In Search of Arkham Country,” LSNo. 13 (Fall 1986): 54–67; Will Murray, “In Search of Arkham Country Revisited,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 65–69; Robert D.Marten, “Arkham Country: In Rescue of the Lost Searchers,” LSNo. 39 (Summer 1998): 1–20.
Armitage, Henry.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” the librarian of Miskatonic University (A.M.Miskatonic, Ph.D.Princeton, Litt. D.Johns Hopkins). He encounters Wilbur Whateley in the library, but refuses to let him take home a copy of the Necronomicon,sensing that it could lead to cataclysmic results. He later sees Whateley die in the library while trying to steal the book. With great effort, he deciphers Whateley’s encrypted diary and realizes the threat that the Whateley family (specifically, Whateley’s monstrous twin brother) poses to the world, and he leads the expedition to exterminate it.
Arruda, Capt Manuel.
In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,the captain of a ship, the Fortaleza,of Barcelona, bound from Cairo to Providence. In 1770 it is stopped by authorities and found to contain large numbers of Egyptian mummies, scheduled for delivery to “Sailor A.B.C.” (i.e., Joseph Curwen). HPL derived the name from a Manuel Arruda who was a door-to-door fruit seller in Providence in the 1920s. Asbury, Herbert (1891–1963).
American journalist and author of The Gangs of New York(1928) whose horror anthology Not at Night!(Macy-Macius/The Vanguard Press, 1932) contains HPL’s “The Horror at Red Hook.” The volume proved to be pirated from several anthologies edited by Christine Campbell Thomson. For a time WT(from which most of the stories derived) threatened to sue the publisher (HPL gave his support to the suit provided it would involve no financial expenditure on his part; see SL2.260–61), but the publisher eventually withdrew the book from circulation.
Asellius, Sex[tus].
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.
Two juvenile scientific journals (eventually combined) written by HPL, 1903–4. The first five issues bear the title Astronomyas follows: 1, No. 1 (August 1903); 1, No. 2 (September 1903); 1, No. 3 (October 1903); 1, No. 4 (November 1903) (combined with The Monthly Almanack;includes An Annual of Astronomy for the Year 1903: First Edition: Novr. 25, 1903);1, No. 5 (December 1905). The next issue is titled The New Monthly Almanack for December, 1903. The next appears as Astronomy: January 1904: Combined with the Monthly Almanack. The final issue bears the title The Monthly Almanack: Combined with “Astronomy”: Feb’y, 1904.