The fictional Dunwich lies in the valley of the fictional Miskatonic River, but that river has a different and more ominous appearance than does the larger Hudson River in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow":
The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.
As with Dunwich, maybe you don't want to go there.
In contrast, here's an example of how the narrator feels about the Hudson in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow":
Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.
A few years ago, I drove to Maine for a funeral. Along the way, I crossed the Hudson River by way of Bear Mountain Bridge, northwest of Peekskill. I stopped at a scenic overlook above Iona Island and read about the history of the area. This is above Tarrytown, above Washington Irving country, but I could see for myself the charm, mystery, and great beauty of the place, and I understand why people would have been drawn to it in his time and still are today. Not far to the northeast is Sunken Mine, about which I wrote on May 11, 2023. I wrote then that someone should give Putnam County, New York, the Lovecraft treatment, but the Irving treatment might do just as well.
* * *
H.P. Lovecraft lived in Brooklyn in 1924-1926. I have been to New York City only once, on a train, in the dark of night. I'm not qualified at all to write about the city. But in looking at a map, I believe it correct to say that Brooklyn is near or across from the outlet of the Hudson River. That river is not mentioned in "The Horror at Red Hook," but here are a couple of passages referring to water:
Red Hook is a maze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront opposite Governor's Island, with dirty highways climbing the hill from the wharves to that higher ground where the decayed lengths of Clinton and Court Streets lead off toward the Borough Hall.
And:
Somewhere dark sticky water was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of raucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked phosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and climbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the background.
(Another warning to writers: "leeringly" and words, or non-words, like it are bad. Don't use them. Think better, write better, use a dictionary.)
Although Lovecraft was from a harbor town--Providence, Rhode Island--he seems to have been a landlubber, and I believe he found the smell of fish intolerable. Jay Gatsby, on the other hand, hails from the interior of a continent, and yet he wears or wore a yachting costume, earned in service on board a wealthy man's yacht. "To the young Gatz," writes Nick Carraway, "resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world." Lovecraft lived in poverty, in Brooklyn, next to New York Harbor, a place of commerce. Gatsby lived in great wealth, at the fictional West Egg, next to Long Island Sound, a place for yachting and sailboating. In 1925, these two men were an island and worlds apart.
* * *
There is an unfortunate racial aspect in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Here is an example:
He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear.
Someone should have told Washington Irving that white people have white eyeballs, too.
There is almost the same image in The Great Gatsby:
As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.
One hundred and five years separated the publication of those two narratives. How little some things change.
"The Horror at Red Hook" is about race. There's no getting around that. Others have written about the racial aspect of that story in particular and Lovecraft's oeuvre in general. I'll leave that alone for now. But I'm not done with the Hudson River; or Irving, Lovecraft, Fitzgerald, or Nathaniel Hawthorne; or American literature, including weird fiction and horror fiction.
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| The first-day of issue of the U.S. postage stamp "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," from 1974. The artists are of course unidentified. |
Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley
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