An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In “The Shunned House,” a merchant and seaman, the first inhabitant of the Shunned House, along with his wife Rhoby (Dexter) Harris and their children Elkanah (1755–1766), Abigail (1757– 1763), William, Jr. (1759–1797), and Ruth (1761–1763). Most of the family and their servants die while living in the house. Rhoby goes mad, and although William, Jr., becomes quite sickly, he survives, enlists in the army, and returns to the house. He marries Phoebe (Hetfield) Harris of Elizabethtown, N.J., in 1780, but after she gives birth to a stillborn daughter, he moves out of the house and shuts it down. In 1785 his wife bears a son, Dutee Harris, and after his parents die in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797, he is raised by his cousin, Rathbone Harris, son of William’s cousin Peleg Harris. Later descendants are Dutee’s son Welcome Harris (d. 1862), Welcome’s son Archer Harris (d. 1916), and Archer’s son Carrington Harris, the current (i.e., as of 1924) owner of the Shunned House.

Harris, Woodburn (1888–1988).

Correspondent of HPL, living in Vermont. He came in touch with HPL around 1929, probably through the mediation of Walter J.Coates. HPL revised some of Harris’s tracts against Prohibition, although these do not appear to have been published. Only three of HPL’s letters to him survive, but one of these was a handwritten letter of seventy pages (see SL3.58).

Hart, Bertrand K[elton] (1892–1941).

Literary editor of the Providence Journalwho briefly corresponded with HPL. In his column in the Journal,“The Sideshow,” in mid-November 1929, Hart printed a list of what a colleague had recommended as the ten greatest horror stories ever written. HPL found the list so tame that he submitted his own list, published in Hart’s column for November 23; Hart called the list “a little masterpiece of comparative criticism.” Other lists, by August Derleth and Frank Belknap Long, were published in the column for November 25. Hart then stumbled upon HPL’s “The Call of Cthulhu” in Harré’s Beware After Dark!,and professed to be outraged at the fact that the artist Wilcox’s home was given as 7 Thomas Street, where Hart himself had once resided. In the column for November 30 he threatened to send a ghost to

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HPL’s doorstep at 3 A.M. that night. At 3:07 A.M. HPL wrote the sonnet “The Messenger” and sent it to Hart, who published it in his column for December 3. Hart printed a letter by HPL in his column for March 18, 1930. Some of Hart’s columns discussing HPL were gathered in The Sideshow of B.K.Hart,ed. Philomela Hart (1941). Although Hart repeatedly expressed a wish to meet HPL, he never did so; possibly HPL, with his typically exaggerated modesty, felt himself too insignificant to meet so recognized a figure in local journalism.

Hartmann, J[oachim] F[riedrich] (1848–1930).

Astrologer who incurred HPL’s ire when he wrote the article “Astrology and the European War” in the Providence Evening Newsfor September 4, 1914. HPL and Hartmann exchanged several polemics in the Evening News—the former with “Science versus Charlatanry” (September 9) and “The Falsity of Astrology” (October 10); the latter with a letter to the editor (October 7) and “The Science of Astrology” (October 22)—until HPL finally silenced him with satires written under pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr. (derived from Jonathan Swift’s Isaac Bickerstaffe pieces satirizing the astrologer Partridge): “Astrology and the Future” (October 13) and “Delavan’s Comet and Astrology” (October 26). After Hartmann’s last article (“A Defense of Astrology,” December 14), HPL concluded with an article under his own name (“The Fall of Astrology,” December 17) and one final Bickerstaffe article (letter to the editor, December 21). Articles on both sides are collected in Science vs. Charlatanry (1979).

Hartwell, Dr.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” Henry Armitage’s personal physician.

“Haunter of the Dark, The.”

Short story (9,350 words); written November 5–9, 1935. First published in WT(December 1936); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in CCand An2