An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

A ship commanded by a Captain William Jones comes upon a bottle with a message in it (probably suggested by Poe’s “MS. Found in a Bottle”). This note—written in a very wild and hasty hand on HPL’s autograph manuscript—announces the writer as John Jones (no relation to the captain, one imagines) and says that there is a treasure to be found on the spot marked with an asterisk on the reverse of the note (here we find a crude map of the Indian Ocean, with a nebulous land mass labeled “Austrailia” [sic]at the bottom left). This note is dated January 1, 1864.

Captain Jones decides that “it would pay to go” to the spot, and the crew do so. There they find another note from John Jones: “Dear Searcher excuse me for the practical joke I have played on you but it serves you right to find nothing for your foolish act…” But John kindly defrays their expenses with an iron box containing “$25.0.00,” whatever that is. After reading this note (inexplicably dated December 3, 1880) Captain Jones delivers the one funny line in the entire story: “I’d like to kick his head off.”

The story is an early attempt at humor. For later tales of this sort, see “Ibid,” “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson,” and “Sweet Ermengarde.”

“Living Heritage: Roman Architecture in Today’s America, A.”

Essay (12,760 words); written in December 1934; unpublished in this form.

The essay was written at the request of Maurice W.Moe, who asked HPL to write an essay of his choice for an amateur magazine being produced by his students. HPL wrote a rather routine account of traces of Roman architectural principles in American cities (much of it based upon first-hand observation of sites in New York City and elsewhere). HPL sent Moe the essay without typing it; he later thought Moe had lost the manuscript (the student magazine never materialized). The essay, however, survives in AHT. HPL apparently retained the prefatory section of the essay, which appeared as “Heritage or Modernism: Common Sense in Art Forms” in the Californian(Summer 1935). This article lambastes modern art and architecture for being consciously theoretical and too radically divergent from the artistic traditions of the past.

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Page 150

Lockhart, Andrew F[rancis] (1890–1964),

amateur journalist from Milbank, South Dakota, and author of the first article on HPL, “Little Journeys to the Homes of Prominent Amateurs” ( United Amateur,September 1915), a biographical sketch; the information for it was surely derived exclusively from correspondence with HPL. HPL responded with a biographical sketch of Lockhart in the series, “Little Journeys to the Homes of Prominent Amateurs” ( United Amateur,October 1915), written under the pseudonym “El Impartial.” Lockhart edited the professional temperance journal Chain Lightning,which HPL wrote about in “More Chain Lightning” ( United Official Quarterly,October 1915). HPL also wrote the poem, “To Mr. Lockhart, On His Poetry” ( Tryout,March 1917); its appearance in a South Dakota newspaper has not been located. Long, Frank Belknap, Jr. (1901–1994).