An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

HPL composed the poem while writing a letter to Finlay, who had lamented the decline of the tradition of dedicatory poems. “The Faceless God” had appeared in WT(May 1936), and Finlay’s illustration is generally considered the finest ever published in the magazine.

“To Zara.”

Poem (42 lines); written on August 31, 1922. First published in SL1.164–65 (in a letter to Maurice W.Moe, [September] 1922).

The poem is a hoax: it is purportedly written by Poe (in one ms. HPL dates it to 1829) and is an imitation/parody of Poe’s numerous and extravagant poems to women (this one is dedicated to “Miss Sarah Longhurst”). HPL wrote it as a joke on Alfred Galpin, who generally regarded HPL’s poetry with disdain. HPL and Frank Belknap Long claimed that they had found the poem in the possession of an ancient Maine man who had known Poe. Galpin, although not believing this story, thought the poem was copied from the work of some obscure nineteenth-century poet, perhaps Arthur O’Shaughnessy. Tobey, William.

In “The Lurking Fear,” he and George Bennett accompany the narrator to the Martense mansion in search of the entity that haunts it. They spend the night, but Tobey and Bennett mysteriously disappear.

Toldridge, Elizabeth [Anne] (1861–1940),

poet and correspondent of HPL (1928–37). Toldridge published two collections of verse, The Soul of Love(New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1910) and Mother’s Love Songs(Boston: R.G. Badger, 1911), long before she ever came in touch with HPL. She was also widely published in amateur and semi-professional magazines and anthologies. She got in touch with HPL in 1928, some years after HPL had served as a judge for a poetry contest (otherwise unknown) in which Toldridge had participated. She was disabled in some unknown manner and was unable to leave her apartment in Washington, D.C. HPL visited her there on May 6, 1929; in 1936 R.H. Barlow visited her while traveling from Florida to Providence. Her discussions of poetry with HPL may have been instrumental in HPL’s shift away from archaistic verse in theory and practice.

“Tomb, The.”

Short story (4,190 words); written in June 1917. First published in the Vagrant(March 1922); rpt. WT (January 1926); first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in TD.

Jervas Dudley tells of his lonely and secluded life. He discovers, in a wooded hollow near his home, a tomb that houses the remains of a family, the Hydes,

< previous page page_270 next page > < previous page page_271 next page >

Page 271

that dwelt in a mansion nearby. This mansion had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground, although only one member of the family had perished in the flame. The tomb exercises an unholy fascination upon Dudley, and he haunts it for hours at a time. It is locked, but the door is “fastened ajarin a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains and padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion of half a century ago.” Dudley resolves to enter this tomb at any cost, but he is too young and weak to break open the lock (he is only ten years old at this time). Gradually he begins to display various odd traits, in particular a knowledge of very ancient things that he could not possibly have learned from books. One night, as he is lying on a bower outside the tomb, he seems to hear voices from within: “Every shade of New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy….” He does not say what the colloquy was about, but upon returning home he goes directly to a rotting chest in the attic and finds a key to unlock the tomb.