An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

rogant & sardonic way—the protest of individuality against capricious, arbitrary, & excessively detailed authority” (HPL to Helen Sully, December 4, 1935; ms., JHL). At that time they and other friends formed the Providence Detective Agency and the Blackstone Military Band. It is not clear whether Chester attended Hope Street High School with HPL, but Chester did, in 1905, follow HPL’s lead in operating a hectographed paper, the East Side News,similar to HPL’s Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy;in 1905–06 they revived the Providence Detective Agency and Blackstone Military Band, which had apparently been in abeyance for some time, and also formed the Providence Astronomical Society and the East Side Historical Club. Chester also presumably assisted in building the Great Meadow Country Clubhouse in Rehoboth, Mass, (see Munroe, Harold Bateman). On August 12, 1912, Chester was a witness to HPL’s will. By 1915 Chester had established himself at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, although his occupation is unknown. HPL had persuaded him to join amateur journalism, and HPL wrote the article “Introducing Mr. Chester Pierce Munroe” ( Conservative,April 1915) welcoming him to the organization. In return, Chester apparently arranged for HPL to write the astronomy series “Mysteries of the Heavens” in the Asheville Gazette-News (February 16–May 17, 1915).

Munroe, Harold Bateman (1891–1966).

Brother of Chester P.Munroe and boyhood friend of HPL. Like his brother, Harold was a member of the various gangs or boyhood groups in which HPL was involved, such as the Providence Detective Agency and the Blackstone Military Band. HPL reports that he and Harold were “Confederates in sympathy, & used to act out all the battles of the War in Blackstone Park” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, [May 2, 1929]; ms., JHL). Not much is heard of Harold until August 8, 1921, when Harold, now a businessman as well as a deputy sheriff, peremptorily summoned HPL to revisit the Great Meadow Country Clubhouse, just across the state line in Rehoboth, Mass., which HPL and his friends had built around 1907, with the assistance of a Civil War veteran named James Kay. Harold and HPL resolved to resume holding monthly meetings at the clubhouse, along with other boyhood friends such as Ronald Upham and Stuart Coleman, but the plan was quickly forgotten. Munroe is not to be confused with Harold W.Munro, a classmate of HPL’s at Hope Street High School and author of the memoir “Lovecraft, My Childhood Friend” (1983; in LR).

“Music of Erich Zann, The.”

Short story (3,480 words); probably written in December 1921. First published in the National Amateur(March 1922); rpt. WT(May 1925) and WT(November 1934); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in TD.

The narrator has “examined maps of the city with the greatest of care,” but he cannot find the Rue d’Auseil, where he once dwelt as an “impoverished student of metaphysics” and heard the music of Erich Zann. Zann is a mute viol-player who played in a cheap theatre orchestra and dwelt in the garret apartment of a boarding-house run by “the paralytic Blandot”; the narrator, occupying a room on the fifth floor, occasionally hears Zann playing wild tunes featuring harmo

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