An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

A German submarine commanded by a Prussian nobleman, Karl Heinrich, Graf von AltbergEhrenstein, sinks a British freighter; later a dead seaman from the freighter is found clinging to the railing of the submarine, and in his pocket is found a “very odd bit of ivory carved to represent a youth’s head crowned with laurel.” The German crew sleep poorly, have bad dreams, and some think that dead bodies are drifting past the portholes. Some crewmen actually go mad, claiming that a curse has fallen upon them; Altberg-Ehrenstein executes them to restore discipline. Some days later an explosion in the engine room cripples the submarine, and still later a general mutiny breaks out, with some sailors further damaging the ship; the commander again executes the culprits. Finally only Altberg-Ehrenstein and Lieutenant Klenze are left alive. The ship sinks lower and lower toward the bottom of the ocean. Klenze then goes mad, shouting: “ Heis calling! Heis calling! I hear him! We must go!” He voluntarily leaves the ship and plunges into the ocean. As the ship finally reaches the ocean floor, the commander sees a remarkable sight: an entire city at the bottom of the ocean, with various buildings, temples, and villas, mostly built of marble. “Confronted at last with the Atlantis I had formerly deemed largely a myth,” Altberg-Ehrenstein notices one especially large temple carved from the solid rock; later he sees that a head sculpted on it is exactly like the figurine taken from the dead British sailor. The commander, finishing his written account of his adventure on August 20, 1917, prepares to explore the temple after he sees an anomalous phosphorescence emerging from far within the temple. “So I will carefully don my diving suit and walk boldly up the steps into that primal shrine; that silent secret of unfathomed waters and uncounted years.”

This is the first of HPL’s stories not to have been first published in an amateur journal; possibly its length was a factor, as most amateur journals could not accommodate so long a tale. Like “Dagon,” it uses World War I as a vivid backdrop, although HPL mars the story by crude satire on the protagonist’s militarist and chauvinist sentiments. There also seems to be an excess of supernaturalism, with many bizarre occurrences that do not seem to unify into a coherent whole. But the story is significant in postulating (like “Dagon”) an entire civilization antedating humanity and possibly responsible for many of the intellectual and aesthetic achievements of humanity. In a letter HPL remarks that “the flame that the Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein beheld was a witch-fire lit by spirits many mil

< previous page page_261 next page > < previous page page_262 next page >

Page 262

lennia old” ( SL1.287), but no reader could ever make this deduction based solely on the textual evidence. In a late letter ( SL5.267–69) he discusses the ancient sources for the myth of Atlantis (in which, of course, he did not believe).

Terrible Old Man, The.

In “The Terrible Old Man,” the aged and eccentric former sea captain in Kingsport who is rumored by the townsfolk to be fabulously wealthy. A band of robbers who attempt to despoil the feeble old man of his supposed treasure are mysteriously and viciously despatched. He is also briefly mentioned in “The Strange High House in the Mist.”

“Terrible Old Man, The.”

Short story (1,160 words); written on January 28, 1920. First published in the Tryout(July 1921); rpt. WT(August 1926); first collected in O;corrected text in DH.

Three thieves—Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek, and Manuel Silva—plan to rob the home of the Terrible Old Man, who is said to be both fabulously wealthy and very feeble. The Terrible Old Man dwells in Kingsport, a city somewhere in New England. In the “far-off days of his unremembered youth” he was a sea-captain, and seems to have a vast collection of ancient Spanish gold and silver pieces. He has now become very eccentric, appearing to spend hours speaking to an array of bottles in each of which a small piece of lead is suspended from a string. On the night of the planned robbery, Ricci and Silva enter the Terrible Old Man’s house while Czanek waits outside. Screams are heard from the house, but there is no sign of the two robbers. Czanek wonders whether his colleagues were forced to kill the old man and make a laborious search through his house for the treasure. But then the Terrible Old Man appears at the doorway, “leaning quietly on his knotted cane and smiling hideously.” Later three unidentifiable bodies are found washed in by the tide.