Whence R'lyeh?-Part Two

A couple of years ago, I played a little word game in which I derived the name of an imaginary place, R'lyeh, from that of a real place, Brooklyn. H.P. Lovecraft was familiar with both places: He created one and lived in the other. My word game was just that--a game. But for some time now, I have considered the idea that the name R'lyeh came from a certain other source. I may or may not be the first to propose a connection between the two.

R'lyeh is the name of the sunken city in which Cthulhu lies dreaming until the stars are right and he can awaken to reclaim the earth. In "The Call of Cthulhu" (written 1926, published 1928), R'lyeh is heaved up from the ocean floor by a powerful earthquake. Worldwide disturbances ensue before the city sinks again, presumably taking its lone inhabitant with it. For the moment we are safe.

Various people have proposed various sources of inspiration for "The Call of Cthulhu." Wikipedia lists some of them:

• "The Kraken" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1830)
• "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant (1887)
• "The Novel of the Black Seal" by Arthur Machen (1895)
• The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904) by William Scott-Elliott
• The Gods of Pegāna (1905) and "A Shop in Go-By Street" (1919) by Lord Dunsany
• The Moon Pool by A. Merritt (1919)

Note that almost all are works of the Victorian Era or by writers of the Victorian Era. Note also that all are works of fiction or verse except for William Scott-Elliott's books, which are pseudo-historical, or, more precisely, Theosophical. A tale hangs by those two notes.

Although Theosophy is supposed to have predated the Victorian Era, it is most closely identified with Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), a Russian occultist and one of the founders of The Theosophical Society. (1) In turn, Madame Blavatsky is identified with her ideas about previous races and civilizations and about the sunken continents Atlantis and Lemuria. Theosophist William Scott-Elliot mapped those continents in his role as the cartographer and historian of places that never were. Even under Scott-Elliott's scheme, the sunken city R'lyeh would have been in a part of the Pacific Ocean distant from Lemuria.

H.P. Lovecraft knew of Theosophy and referred to its believers in the second paragraph of "The Call of Cthulhu":

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it.

Richard S. Shaver (1907-1975) and Raymond A. Palmer (1910-1977), the originators of the so-called "Shaver Mystery," were almost certainly inspired by Theosophy as well. (2) Like Theosophy, The Shaver Mystery is a secret history of the earth and its races of men. And like Theosophy, The Shaver Mystery was inspired by a previous source.

In 1956, a guest interviewer on the Long John Nebel radio show asked Raymond A. Palmer if Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Coming Race (1871) was a possible precursor to Shaver's stories of evil, subterranean Deros and beneficial Teros. Palmer admitted that the novel was in fact one precursor, but that The Coming Race is actually further evidence in favor of The Shaver Mystery and not merely a work of fiction. It's a curious and rather deft move to take a possible swipe and turn into a buttress for your own claims. But that's what Palmer--no fool to be sure--did.

If Shaver and Palmer swiped ideas from The Coming Race, they weren't the first to do so. In Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), Madame Blavatsky herself claimed that Bulwer-Lytton's fictional subterranean race and their occult source of energy are essentially real. Through the works of nineteenth century Theosophists, Bulwer-Lytton's ideas were transmitted to the twentieth century, so far in fact that they were supposed to have been studied by Nazi occultists. We know that in part because of Willy Ley's article, "Pseudoscience in Naziland," which appeared in the May 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The Shaver Mystery was in full swing by then in the pages of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Those two magazines were of course the main rivals to Astounding. They were also edited by Ray Palmer. Within a very short time, Raymond A. Palmer and John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding, would embrace their own versions of pseudoscience (or pseudo-religion), for by the time "Pseudoscience in Naziland" was published, L. Ron Hubbard was already slouching towards Dianetics, and Kenneth Arnold was only a month away from seeing the first flying saucers.

As I have suggested, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is a novel about a subterranean super-race in control of a powerful source of occult energy. And as I have pointed out, those ideas found their way into the beliefs of the Theosophists and other occultists. They also found their way into the pseudo-religions, pseudo-history, and pseudoscience of the twentieth century. Richard Shaver and Raymond Palmer knew about them. So did John W. Campbell and almost certainly L. Ron Hubbard. And of course they found their way into pulp fiction, more particularly, into "The Call of Cthulhu." The Coming Race by the way was reprinted under a more elaborate title, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race, for Vril was the name Bulwer-Lytton gave his imaginary source of energy. (3) The masters of that energy--Bulwer-Lytton's subterranean super-race--were called Vril-ya, a word echoed in the name of great Cthulhu's island city.

* * *

Before preparing this article, I had never read "The Kraken" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Now that I have read it, it's hard for me to believe that Lovecraft never read the poem or was not inspired by it in his writing of "The Call of Cthulhu." You can judge for yourself. Credit goes to Robert M. Price for making the connection.

The Kraken

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumber'd and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Notes

(1) The Theosophical Society was founded in New York City in 1875. Incidentally, Helena Petrovna Bavatsky shared her first two initials with Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
(2) As were Talbot Mundy, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.
(3) According to William Scott-Elliott, Vril was also used to power aircraft in ancient Lemuria. In the twentieth century, believers in UFOs proposed something similar as the driving force behind flying saucers.

"Lemuria at its greatest extent," a map by or for William Scott-Elliott and The Theosophical Society. R'lyeh would have been in what is now the South Pacific, well south of Lemuria (orange on the map). 

P.S. (Apr. 24, 2014): In my first paragraph above, I wondered whether I am first to make the connection between Vril-Ya and R'lyeh. It turns out I am not. Here is a link to an Internet conversation from 2008:

http://forum.megatherion.com/index.php?topic=3316.0

Text and captions copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

Johanson and the Monster

The old saying is that life imitates art. In 1926, H.P. Lovecraft composed "The Call of Cthulhu," a story that would become a classic of twentieth century horror and fantasy. Published in Weird Tales in February 1928, "The Call of Cthulhu" is a kind of mystery in which a scientific investigator attempts to reconstruct the events of a time only recently past. The key piece of evidence in his reconstruction is the diary of a Norwegian sailor, Gustaf Johansen, who was there when Cthulhu awoke from his slumbers on the island city of R'lyeh. Johansen was the lone survivor of that encounter, but even he has succumbed to the influence of Cthulhu before the story ends.

The fainting narrator is a cliché in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Alternatively, the narrator is driven insane by his experience, sometimes temporarily, often permanently. Even if his insanity is only temporary, the narrator must lie abed before recovering himself. Gustaf Johansen is not the narrator of "The Call of Cthulhu," but of all the characters in the story, he comes in closest contact with its horrors. Made of sturdier stuff than the typical Lovecraftian narrator, Johansen nonetheless falls into a state of depression or despair after encountering Cthulhu. In the end, he dies mysteriously, almost certainly at the hands of cultists.

Four years after the publication of "The Call of Cthulhu," the Swedish overseer of a rubber plantation in the Belgian Congo reported an experience like that of Gustaf Johansen, though admittedly not by degree. His name was J.C. Johanson, and on a hunting trip in the Kasai Valley, he and his bearer encountered a monster out of the past. Described as a lizard sixteen yards long, the creature was devouring a rhinoceros when the two men came upon it. Johanson is supposed to have taken pictures of the creature. The two images circulating on the Internet have been shown to be fakes. In any event, Johanson's reaction is familiar to anyone who has read a story by H.P. Lovecraft:

The experience was too much for my nervous system. Completely exhausted, I sank down behind the bush that had given me shelter. Blackness reigned before my eyes. . . . I must have looked like one demented when at last I regained camp. . . . For eight days I lay in a fever, unconscious nearly all the time. (1)

Even Johanson's expressions--"Blackness reigned before my eyes"--echo writing from the pulps.

I have never seen a Tyrannosaurus rex eating a rhinoceros or for that matter a ham sandwich. I can't say what my reaction would be to such a thing. But pulp writers and moviemakers don't seem to have a lot of faith in the psychological strength and stability of their fellow human beings. If Johanson was laid low by the sighting of a dinosaur in the African jungle, I don't think he should have been in Africa in the first place, so far as it is from a fainting couch. In other words, Johanson's story sounds like a story. I wonder if the man himself ever existed. And if it was just a story, I wonder if the person who thought it up had read "The Call of Cthulhu" not long before.

Notes

(1) Quoted in Monsters and Mythic Beasts by Angus Hall (1975), p. 87.

Copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

Reaching Hands

Reaching hands are something of a cliché‎, especially in movies. Artists and moviemakers use reaching hands to create a sense of mystery and suspense. But using reaching hands on a magazine cover serves another purpose: it allows the artist to pack a lot of stuff into his or her tableau, and whoever can't fit can at least get his hand into the picture. That's not always the case, but it happens often enough, and when it does, the composition suffers, as in Rankin's cover and Senf's cover from January 1931. Even Margaret Brundage was guilty in an otherwise fine cover from March 1937. In any case, the artists who contributed to Weird Tales relied on reaching hands for eleven covers in all. 

Weird Tales, April 1930. Cover story: "The Dust of Egypt" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Hugh Rankin. The first reaching hand cover doesn't quite fit the pattern, for the hand isn't obviously a threat.

Weird Tales, May 1930. Cover story: "The Brain Thief" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. You almost get three for one in this picture: the guy in the turban has not one but two reaching hands. In the background is another reaching hand holding a sword. As you can see, sometimes the reaching hand is the hand of a good guy, but most of the time, it's the hand of a bad guy.

Weird Tales, January 1931. Cover story: "The Lost Lady" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by C.C. Senf, whose weird menace cover has a little bit of everything: a beautiful and scantily clad woman, a green monster, a bald villain with a cat-o'-nine-tails, a reaching hand holding a pistol, and some bondage for those who favor that kind of thing. There's so much squeezed into the picture in fact that the hero is squeezed out. As always, Senf handled the female form, face, and hair very nicely and with good taste. It's pretty plain to me that Senf liked and respected women, even if he did tie them to a post on occasion. There are entirely too many artists who don't like or respect women, and they show it in their art.

Weird Tales, November 1931. Cover story: "Placide's Wife" by Kirk Mashburn. Cover art by C.C. Senf. From here on out, the reaching hands are bad hands, or at least they appear to be.

Weird Tales, December 1931. Cover story: "The Dark Man" by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by C.C. Senf. This may be the most well composed of all the reaching hand covers.

Weird Tales, July 1932. Cover story: "The Phantom Hand" by Victor Rousseau. Cover art by C.C. Senf. At last, the reaching hand has found its way into the title of a cover story!

Weird Tales, March 1935. Cover story: "Clutching Hands of Death" by Harold Ward. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Here the reaching hands have become "clutching hands," and not just any clutching hands, but "clutching hands of death." 

Weird Tales, May 1935. Cover story: "The Death Cry" by Craig Kennedy. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Finally, a man rather than a woman is in peril from the reaching hands.

Weird Tales, March 1937. Cover story: "Strange Orchids" by Dorothy Quick. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. Here the reaching hand is actually a shadow of a reaching hand. The shadow on the cover is a theme for another day. The woman coated in gold showed up later in James Bond's bed in Goldfinger. Margaret Brundage made nice use of the three primary colors here.

Weird Tales, May 1941. I believe the cover story is "There Are Such Things" by Seabury Quinn. The cover artist was Hannes Bok. Here the reaching hand imperils an effigy of the heroine instead of her real self. Bok's cover may fit into the reaching hand category only just barely.

Weird Tales, January 1951. Cover story: "The Hand of Saint Ury" by Gordon MacCreagh. Cover art by Charles A. Kennedy. Ten years went by before the reaching hand showed up again. I think it's a bad hand. Just look at those nails. Plus, it's green. But I'm not sure. Note the skulls in the woman's eyes.

Text and captions copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

John Giunta Update

A reader (also a writer), Christopher M. O'Brien, has kindly provided me with Sam Moskowitz's two-page personalized obituary of John Giunta from Luna Monthly No. 20 (January 1971). Sam Moskowitz may have his detractors, but to his credit, he wrote about people and events about which no one else has written. His obituary of John Giunta has as much personal information on the artist as anyone will ever know.

John Giunta did indeed pass away on November 6, 1970, at age fifty. Unless he was about to turn fifty-one at his death, that would make his birth year 1920. Maybe only the city or state of New York knows his birthdate. Giunta did not die alone, but he lived alone. As Sam Moskowitz wrote:

His death was in the all-too sad tradition of artists which has become almost stereotyped in fiction and moving pictures. He died nearly penniless, receiving public assistance and with art assignments rare and poorly paid. Though only 50, he looked nearly 65, and probably did not weigh much over 100 pounds at the time of his death.

Giunta suffered a stroke in his room at the Village Plaza Hotel in New York. He died eight hours later in the hospital.

"He was a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly, generous individual," Moskowitz wrote, "optimistically striving to better his fortunes throughout his entire life. He was always his own man, losing many important assignments rather than compromise his ideas."

 * * *

I listed Giunta's credits in my previous postings on him. There's one I missed however. In 1949, John Giunta edited a comic book called True Crime Comics. Among the contributors were Giunta's science fiction friends, Sam Moskowitz, Raymond Van Houten, and James V. Taurasi. Also among the contributors was Giunta's nephew, Aldo Giunta. Like his uncle, Aldo Giunta contributed to fan publications. He also had a story, "Jingle in the Jungle," published in If in June 1957.

* * *

In the same issue announcing the death of John Giunta, Luna Monthly also announced the death of the artist Steele Savage. Born in Michigan in 1900, Savage illustrated a number of books, including science fiction books by John Brunner and Robert A. Heinlein. He also contributed to Famous Fantastic Mysteries in the 1940s. Savage died on December 5, 1970. I was researching Savage's life well before I read of his death in Luna Monthly. My sense is that Steele Savage may have been another in a line of artists (or human beings in general) that is entirely too long: men and women who have lived lonely and very often desperate lives. The question is: Must the artist suffer so that he might create? There have been happy artists, artists with families. N.C. Wyeth is one who comes to mind (although he died suddenly and tragically). Even so, does the artist suffer so that the rest of humanity might gain some joy or pleasure from his work? Did H.P. Lovecraft practically starve himself so that we might have his stories to read? I'm not sure that such things are needful. It may be that the artist is a person who finds himself in a box of a certain kind (as we all do), and though he can escape one kind of box, he can't escape another. And so--despite his suffering and desperation, and very often by heroic effort--he creates.

The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein, with cover art by Steele Savage (1900-1970). Savage painted in a style that is at once dreamlike and hyperrealistic. That peculiar combination is sometimes referred to as magical realism and was popular in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, especially in illustration and advertising. Simon Greco (1917-2005) was another practitioner of magical realism. If I remember right, The Rolling Stones has Tribble-like creatures, just in case you're putting together a list of influences on the TV show Star Trek. 

Thanks to Christopher M. O'Brien for providing the article from Luna Monthly.

Text and captions copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

Tarleton Collier (1888 or 1889-1970)

Edward Tarleton Collier
Reporter, Editor, Author, Public Speaker, Penologist
Born December 22, 1888 or 1889, Mobile, Alabama
Died June 4, 1970, Fulton County, Georgia

Edward Tarleton Collier was born on December 22, 1888 or 1889, in Mobile and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. Collier graduated from Auburn University in 1907, presumably with a bachelor's degree. He also received a master's degree from Auburn and studied at the University of Chicago. Collier was a newspaperman for more than a quarter century: editor of the Selma Journal; reporter for, then editor of the Atlanta Georgian; then with the Chicago American, International News Service (I.N.S.), and by the mid 1940s editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Collier also worked for the Farm Security Administration in Montgomery, Alabama.

From 1914 to 1938, Tarleton Collier wrote for pulp and story magazines, including Baseball Stories, Breezy Stories, Brief Stories, The Midland, The Parisienne Monthly Magazine, The Smart Set, Snappy Stories, Telling Tales, and Young's Magazine. He wrote two stories for Weird Tales, "The Siren" from June 1923 and "Top of the World" from November 1935. Collier also wrote Georgia Penal System (1938), Penal System: A Reflection of Our Lives and Our Customs (1940), and Fire in the Sky (1941), a novel of the South. He died on June 4, 1970, in Fulton County, Georgia.

Tarleton Collier's Stories in Weird Tales

"The Siren" (June 1923)

"Top of the World" (Nov. 1935)

Further Reading

"Top of the World" was reprinted in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (1994). 

Text and captions copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

Fiswoode Tarleton (1884-1931)

Author, Editor, Instrument Maker

Born August 14, 1884, Place unknown

Died April 2, 1931, near Bryson City, North Carolina

The 1929 city directory of Atlanta, Georgia, gives the following listings in exactly this order:

Tarleton Collier spl writer The Georgian Co

" Fiswoode r125 7th NE

The first man was newspaperman Edward Tarleton Collier, better known as Tarleton Collier and born on December 22, 1888 or 1889, in Mobile, Alabama. (1) The second was author and editor Fiswoode Tarleton, born August 14, 1884, in some unknown place. The compilers of that city directory obviously made a mistake, listing a man with the first name Tarleton immediately above a man with the last name Tarleton. Both were writers. Both shared the name Tarleton. The first question that leaps to mind is this: Did they know each other? I'll tell you right now, that question is trivial. A far better question is this one: How did the names of those two men, both of whom contributed to Weird Tales, end up in juxtaposition in a 1929 city directory? Do you see what I mean when I say the world is very often essentially weird? I set out to write about Fiswoode Tarleton. Now I am obligated to write about Tarleton Collier as well. Fiswoode first.

Fiswoode Tarleton was born on August 14, 1884. I have been unable to find him in census records. However, a man by that name filled out a draft card in Boston in 1918. He was then working as an instrument maker. Tarleton's headstone gives a birth date of 1890. That date appears to be merely an approximation, rushed through upon the author's sudden and unexpected death. But is it possible there were two men in the history of this country named Fiswoode Tarleton? It's possible, but an article from Poetry, 1921, announced the arrival of a new magazine of verse, called Voices and published in Boston, with Fiswoode Tarleton as associate editor. I think it's safe to assume that they were one in the same and that Tarleton was born not in 1890 but in 1884.

I don't know Fiswoode Tarleton's place of birth or much about his career, but by 1929, he was in Atlanta, Georgia, listed, if not living, next to Tarleton Collier. In addition to being associate editor of Voices, Tarleton was editor of The Modern Review. He also wrote short stories for Adventure, The American Magazine, The Bookman, The Century, Echo, The Golden Book Magazine, Good Housekeeping, McClure's Magazine, The Modern Review, Overland Monthly, Plain Talk, and Weird Tales. His story "Curtains" (or "Bloody Ground"), from McClure's Magazine (May 1928), won an O. Henry Award in 1928.

Fiswoode Tarleton may have been a Southerner, for he wrote a book, published in 1929, about the South. The book is called Bloody Ground, A Cycle of the Southern Hills. The New York Times had this to say about Bloody Ground:

The book flames and writhes. The pictures burn into the brain. One will encounter few books as unforgettable as "Bloody Ground." Fiswoode Tarleton, a Chaucer of the Southern hills [. . .] has transcribed a speech that will soon be lost, transfixed in flight a vanishing race, and written a cycle of stories which are both powerful and distinctive. (2)

Tarleton wrote a second book, Some Trust in Chariots, published in 1930. Unfortunately, his very promising career was nearing its end.

About this time of year in 1931, Fiswoode Tarleton went to visit with another writer named  Horace Kephart at Kephart's North Carolina home. On the evening of April 2, Kephart and Tarleton hired a taxi to drive them to a bootlegger's place near Cherokee. (This was still during Prohibition.) On the way back to Bryson City, the car overturned. The driver survived, but the two authors, Horace Kephart and Fiswoode Tarleton, were killed. Swain High School auditorium in Bryson City was full up on April 5 for the funeral, for Kephart (1862-1931) was a greatly admired writer and a lover of his adopted mountain home. He is remembered even today. And for some reason that may be lost, his guest, Fiswoode Tarleton, who was at the time of his death a resident of Decatur, Georgia, was buried with Kephart at Bryson City Cemetery. He was, then, once again placed next to a fellow writer.

Notes

(1) Collier died on June 4, 1970, in Fulton County, Georgia, and was buried in Fairburn, Georgia.

(2) New York Times, February 4, 1929, p. 63.

Fiswoode Tarleton's Story in Weird Tales

"The Blue Lizard" (June 1928)

Further Reading

If you do a  search for "Fiswoode Tarleton," Tarleton Collier," and especially "Horace Kephart," you will find many articles of interest on the Internet.

A gallery of covers of Adventure, one of the premium pulps, with Fiswoode Tarleton's byline on the cover.  The first is from 1925, the last from February 1, 1931, two months before the author's death.

Text and captions copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley

Marietta Hawley (1836-1926)

Pseudonym of Marietta Holley

Aka "Josiah Allen's Wife"

Poet, Author, Humorist, Music Teacher

Born July 16, 1836, near Adams, Jefferson County, New York

Died March 1, 1926, near Pierrepont Manor, Jefferson County, New York

I have pored through the list of writers who contributed to Weird Tales, and I thought I had found all of its writers of the nineteenth century. Now another turns up. I guess this is why it's called research.

The November 1927 issue of Weird Tales closed with a long poem called "The Haunted Mansion" by Marietta Hawley. That name would not have been familiar to readers, for it was an old pseudonym of an author who had passed away the year before at age eighty-nine. Her poem would not have been familiar, either, for it was already six decades old, having originally appeared in 1867 in Peterson's Magazine as "The Haunted Castle." The author's real name, Marietta Holley, would likely have been unknown as well. And perhaps only a few readers would have remembered her nom de plume, "Josiah Allen's Wife." Nonetheless, at one time, Marietta Holley was one of the most popular writers in America.

Marietta Holley was born on July 16, 1836, near the town of Adams in Jefferson County, New York. Called "the female Mark Twain," she was younger than old Sam Clemens by just eight months. Like him and other American humorists of the nineteenth century ("Josh Billings," "Petroleum V. Nasby"), Marietta Holley used a pseudonym in her popular writings. She began as "Marietta Hawley," a poet, but with the publication of My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet's (1872), she became known as "Josiah Allen's Wife." Over the next four decades, Marietta Holley wrote more than two dozen books. Ten were in her very popular "Samantha" series, Samantha being Mrs. Josiah Allen and the narrator of the books.

The New York Times called the Samantha series "beloved" by readers of the 1880s through the early 1900s, yet Marietta was little remembered even late in her own lifetime. My library is small, but I have not found her in The Popular Book by James D. Hart (1950) or The Popular American Novel, 1865-1920 by Herbert F. Smith (1980). Nor have I found her in American Humor by Constance Rourke (1931), The Rise and Fall of American Humor by Jesse Bier (1968), or The Comic Spirit in America edited by John K. Massey (1969). Then I looked in the book Laughing Their Way: Women's Humor in America by Martha Bensley Bruère and Mary Ritter Beard (1934), and there she is--though only briefly (and, incidentally, in a section called "Feminists"). The point of all this is that the writings of Marietta Holley, so popular in their day, quickly passed from memory after her death. Kate H. Winter has helped to revive the memory of "Josiah Allen's Wife" in Marietta Holley: Life with "Josiah Allen's Wife", originally published in 1984 and more recently in a paperback edition.

Marietta Holley died on March 1, 1926, thus she lived into the Weird Tales era, though not long enough to see her poem published in the November 1927 issue. That poem, again, originally entitled "The Haunted Castle," was reprinted in Weird Tales as "The Haunted Mansion." I can't say why. In any case, here it is in its entirety.

The Haunted Castle

by Marietta Holley
(reprinted in Weird Tales as "The Haunted Mansion")

It stands alone on a haunted shore,

With curious words of deathless lore

On its massive gate impearled;

And its carefully guarded mystic key

Locks in its silent mystery

From the seeking eyes of the world.

Oft do its stately walls repeat

Echoes of music wildly sweet

Swelling to gladness high-- 

With mournful ballads of ancient time,

And funeral hymns--and a nursery rhyme

Dying away in a sigh.

Pictures out of each haunted room,

Up through the ghostly shadows loom,

And gleam with a spectral light;

Pictures lit with a radiant glow,

And some that image such desolate woe

That, weeping, you turn from the sight.

Shining like stars in the twilight gloom

Brows as white as a lily's bloom

Gleam from its lattice and door;

And voices soft as a seraph's note,

Through its mysterious chambers float

Back from eternity's shore.

In the mournful silence of midnight air

You hear on its stately and winding stair

The echoes of fairy feet.

Gentle footsteps that lightly fall

Through the enchanted castle hall,

And up in the golden street.

And still in a dark forsaken tower,

Crowned with a withered cypress flower,

Is a bowed head turned away;

A face like carved marble white,

Sweet eyes drooping away from the light,

Shunning the eye of day.

And oft when the light burns low and dim

A haggard form ungainly and grim

Unbidden enters the door;

With chiding eyes whose burning light

You fain would bury in darkness and night,

Never to meet you more.

Mysteries strange its still walls keep,

Strange are the forms that through it sweep-- 

Walking by night and by day.

But evermore will the castle hall

Echo their footsteps' phantom fall,

Till its walls shall crumble away.

Original text copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley