Part 22 (1/2)
I see you are content to have reverted to your native Providence. I hope that your contentment will provide a base from which you may venture into the infinite. I have read your recent contributions to Farthingsworth's rag. Will you forgive my opining that your story of the dreamer by the ancestral tomb seems a trifle earthbound? I had higher expectations of the other tale, but was disappointed when the narrator's dreams urged him to climb the tower not to vistas of infinity but to a view of the dull earth. No wonder he found nothing worthy of description in the mirror.5 I wonder if, while immolated in your marriage, you became so desperate to dream that you were unable to direct the process. I counsel you to follow my example. The dreamer must tolerate no distractions, neither family nor those that call themselves friends. None of these is worth the loss of a solitary dream. I wonder if, while immolated in your marriage, you became so desperate to dream that you were unable to direct the process. I counsel you to follow my example. The dreamer must tolerate no distractions, neither family nor those that call themselves friends. None of these is worth the loss of a solitary dream.
At your urging I recently viewed the moving picture of The Phantom of the Opera The Phantom of the Opera. You mentioned that you fell asleep several times during the picture, and I have to inform you that you must have been describing your own dream of the conclusion rather than the finale which appears on the screen. I a.s.sure you that no ”nameless legion of things” welcomes the Phantom to his watery grave. I am glad that they at least remained nameless in your mind. No dream ought to be named, for words are less than dreams.
I look forward to reading your short novel about the island raised by the marine earthquake, although would an unknown island bear such a name as ”L'yeh” or indeed any name?6 And I am anxious to read your survey of supernatural literature whenit, too, is completed. In the meantime, here are three new tales of mine for your perusal and advancement. Please do make all speed to advise me as soon as there is news. And I am anxious to read your survey of supernatural literature whenit, too, is completed. In the meantime, here are three new tales of mine for your perusal and advancement. Please do make all speed to advise me as soon as there is news.Yours in the fellows.h.i.+p of dreams and letters, CTN.
P.S. Could you make sure to address all correspondence to me under these initials? Could you make sure to address all correspondence to me under these initials?
1, Toad Place,
Berkeley,
Gloucesters.h.i.+re,
Great Britain.
April 17th, 1927.
Dear HPL,
I trust that you have not been alarmed by my prolonged silence. I thought it wise not to attract the attention of the mob for a judicious period. I also felt obliged to give you the opportunity to place some of your fiction and to compose new tales before I favoured you with the first sight of my latest work. I think now you have been amply represented in Farthingsworth's magazine, and I am encouraged to learn that you have recently been productive. I believe it is time that you should have reports of my nocturnal voyaging, and I shall include all those which I judge to be acceptable to my audience. Some, I fear, might overwhelm the mind of any other dreamer.
I hope those which I send you will go some way towards reviving your own capacity to dream. May I a.s.sume that the anecdote about the old sea captain and his bottles was a sketch for a longer story and saw publication by mistake? I suppose it was trivial enough for Farthingsworth's mind to encompa.s.s. I note that the narrator of your tale about the Irish bog is uncertain whether he is dreaming or awake, but his dream scarcely seems worth recording. Your tale of the nameless New Yorker is no dream at all, since the narrator's night is sleepless, and the only fancy you allow him is your own, which you have already achieved-to return to New England. As for the detective in Red Hook, he needs specialists to convince him that he dreamed those subterranean horrors, but I am afraid the medical view failed to persuade this reader.7 I am glad to hear that you wrote your story of the upraised island. May I trust that it has greater scope than the tales I have discussed above? Perhaps this may also be the case with your most recent piece, though I confess that the notion of a mere colour falls short of rousing my imagination. No colour can be sufficiently alien to paint the far reaches of dream, which lie beyond and simultaneously at the core of the awful gulf which is creation. Of the two novels you have recently completed, does the celebration of your return to Providence risk being too provincial? I hope that the account of your dream-quest is the opposite, and I am touched that you should have hidden my name within the text for the informed reader to discover. But I am most pleased by the news that you have delivered your essay on supernatural literature to the publisher. Could you tell me which living writers you have discussed?8 Let me leave you to do justice to the enclosed pieces. Perhaps in due time I may risk sending those I have withheld, when you have sufficiently progressed as a dreamer. Have you yet to loose your mind in the outer darkness? Every dream which I encounter there is a step towards another, more ancient or more alien. I have shared the dreams of creatures whose bodies the mob would never recognize as flesh. Some have many bodies, and some have none at all. Some are shaped in ways at which their dreams can only hint, and which make me grateful for my blindness in the utter dark. I believe these dreams are stages in my advance towards theultimate dream, which I sense awaiting me at the limit of unimaginable s.p.a.ce.Yours in the embrace of the dark, CTN.
1, Toad Place,
Berkeley,
Gloucesters.h.i.+re,
Great Britain.
June 23rd, 1927.
Dear HPL,
Of course you are correct in saying that my new pieces have progressed. I hope that you will be able to communicate your enthusiasm to Farthingsworth and to any other editors whom you approach on my behalf.
Thank you for the list of living writers whose work you have praised in your essay. May I take it that you have withheld one name from me? Perhaps you intended me to be surprised upon reading it in the essay, unless you wished to spare my modesty. Let me rea.s.sure you that its presence would be no surprise and would cause me no embarra.s.sment. If by any chance you decided that my work should not be discussed in the essay because of its basis in actual experience, pray do remind yourself that the material is cast in fictional form. In the case of such an omission, I trust that the error will be rectified before the essay sees publication.
Yours in urgency, CTN.
1, Toad Place,
Berkeley,
Gloucesters.h.i.+re, Great Britain.
August 25th, 1927.
Dear HPL,
I was glad to receive your apology for neglecting to include me in your essay. On reflection, I have concluded that your failure to do so was advantageous. As you say, my work is of a different order. It would not benefit from being discussed alongside the fanciful yarns of the likes of Machen and Blackwood. It is truth masquerading as fiction, and I believe you will agree that it deserves at least an essay to itself. I hope its qualities will aid you in placing your appreciation in a more prestigious journal, and one which is more widely read. To these ends I sent you yesterday the work which I had previously kept back. I trust that your mind will prove equal to the truths conveyed therein. While you a.s.similate their implications, I shall consider how far they are suitable for revelation to the world.
Yours in the darkest verities, CTN.
1, Toad Place,
Berkeley,
Gloucesters.h.i.+re,
Great Britain.