The Picture in the House

"The Picture in the House"
Author H. P. Lovecraft
Country United States
Language English
Published in The National Amateur
Publication type Periodical
Media type Print (Magazine)
Publication date Summer, 1921

"The Picture in the House" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft. It was written on December 12, 1920,[1] and first published in the July 1919 issue of The National Amateur[2]—which was published in the summer of 1921.[3]

Lovecraft Country

"The Picture in the House" begins with something of a manifesto for the series of horror stories Lovecraft would write set in an imaginary New England countryside that would come to be known as Lovecraft Country:

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure of the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteem most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.[4]

As Lovecraft critic Peter Cannon writes, "Here Lovecraft serves notice that he will rely less on stock Gothic trappings and more on his native region as a source for horror."[5] Lovecraft's analysis of the psychological roots of New England horror is echoed in his discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature".[6]

The story introduces two of Lovecraft Country's most famous elements:

I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data.... Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham.[7]

Neither location is further developed in this tale, but Lovecraft had placed the foundations for one of the most enduring settings in weird fiction.

Inspiration

The ending of the story, in which the narrator is saved by a thunderbolt that destroys the ancient house, may have been inspired by the similar ending of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher".[8]

Critic Jason Eckhardt suggested that the dialect the unnaturally aged man uses in the story is derived from one used in James Russell Lowell's Biglow Papers (1848–62). Even in Lowell's time, the dialect was thought to be long extinct.[6] Scott Connors has stated that "the use of an archaic dialect in "The Picture in the House"...represents an early example of (the notion of plunging through time), transforming what might otherwise be a mundane tale of cannibalism into a meditation on the paradoxes of time." [9]

Peter Cannon has pointed to parallels between "The Picture in the House" and Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".[10]

Synopsis

The story is narrated by a lone traveler (a genealogist conducting research), riding on his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, who seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house, only to find that it is occupied by a "loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man," speaking in "an extreme form of Yankee dialect...thought long extinct", whose face is "abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect". "His height could not have been less than six feet." The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and furniture predating the American Revolution. The old man is apparently harmless and ignorant, but shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator (who becomes increasingly nervous and frightened during the man's story) that it made him hunger "fer victuals I couldn't raise nor buy"- presumably human flesh. It is suggested that the old man in the house was murdering men who stumbled upon the shack to satisfy his "craving", and that the old man has extended his life preternaturally through cannibalism.[11] The narrator realizes the old man has been alive from at least the early eighteenth century to the year 1896, when the story takes place. The old man denies that he ever acted on his desire, but then a red drop of blood falls from the ceiling, clearly coming from the floor above, and splashes a page in the book. The narrator then looks up to see a spreading red stain on the ceiling; this belies the old man's statement. At that moment, a bolt of lightning destroys the house. However, the narrator manages to escape from the house.

Connections

A phrase from the story's opening paragraph provided the title for An Epicure of the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by S. T. Joshi.

Reception

Colin Wilson called the story "a nearly convincing sketch of sadism".[12] In a 1986 discussion of Lovecraft's work, Joanna Russ dismissed "The Picture in the House" as "one of the flatter stories".[13] Peter H. Cannon considers the story "rooted in authentic Puritan psychohistory." [14] and regards the climax, with the blood dripping from the ceiling above, as demonstrating "a finesse unknown to present-day horror writers who delight in graphic violence." For Cannon, the careful realism and subtle plot development leading up to the denouement involve a restraint which helps make the story "however conventional its cannibal theme, the strongest of Lovecraft's early New England tales." [15] Donald R. Burleson's 1983 study of Lovecraft's work adjudges "The Picture in the House" as demonstrating that "as early as 1920 Lovecraft was capable of weaving a powerful tale of horror - capable of evoking and sustaining mood through highly artful use of language, capable of exercising control of focus in handling his characters, and capable of using his native New England as a locale for horrors as potent as those to be entertained in more conventional settings.".[16]

Adaptations

Notes

  1. ↑ "Lovecraft's Fiction", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
  2. ↑ "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Picture in the House'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
  3. ↑ S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon, More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 11.
  4. ↑ "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Picture in the House'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
  5. ↑ Peter Cannon, "Introduction", More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 2.
  6. 1 2 Joshi and Schultz, p. 207.
  7. ↑ "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Picture in the House'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
  8. ↑ Joshi and Cannon, More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 24.
  9. ↑ Scott Connors, "Lovecraft's 'The Picture in the House'", The Explicator 59.3 (Spring 2001):p.140
  10. ↑ Peter Cannon, Lovecraft Studies No. 1 (Fall 1979); cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 207.
  11. ↑ S.T. Joshi. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft. San Bernardino CA: Borgo Press, second ed, revised and expanded, 1996, p. 62
  12. ↑ Colin Wilson, The Strength to Dream. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1962, p. 5
  13. ↑ Joanna Russ, "Lovecraft, H(oward) P(hilips), in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers by Curtis C. Smith. St. James Press, 1986, ISBN 0-912289-27-9 (p.461-3).
  14. ↑ Peter H. Cannon. H.P. Lovecraft.(Twayne's United States Authors Series). Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989, p.38
  15. ↑ Peter H. Cannon. H.P. Lovecraft.(Twayne's United States Authors Series). Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989, p.39
  16. ↑ Donald R. Burleson, H.P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study. Westport CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1983, p. 46
  17. ↑ "H・P・ラヴクラフトのダニッチ・ホラー　その他の物語" [H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories] (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 2013-08-12.
  18. ↑ "H.P.Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories is released on August 28, 2007 under the Ganime DVD label." (Press release). Toei Animation. 5 June 2007. Retrieved 2013-08-12.
  19. ↑ "The Picture in the House". 19 Nocturne Boulevard.

References

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