“But more powerful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of the ocean.”
(The White Ship, pg.60)
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According to the introduction, this particular story was influenced by Lord Dunsany’s work, which I have not read. Here we meet Basil Elton, one of the few first person narrators to give us his name, who mans a lighthouse like his father and grandfather before him. A certain White Ship occasionally sails past no matter what temperament the seas may be in, and there is a bearded man on board who beckons to Elton who eventually relents and boards the ship.
From there it becomes a traveling story in which the ship takes Elton to many strange and distant lands that are clearly out of our reality. From the strange names to the amazing things Elton sees to the way it all ends with Elton back on the shore and never seeing the White Ship again, it almost feels like another soul traveling story, except for the odd little twist at the end.
Here I basically just reveled in the unique names that Lovecraft gives these places and the fantastical descriptions of the cities, lands, and even waters that Elton visits. This is the sort of imagination that thrills me because they’re also are the sort of places I want to go. I want to see a palace with glass floors so a glowing river full of spirited fish can flow beneath it. Unfortunately, Elton wants to see more than what he has already experienced, and it doesn’t end well.
I guess he should have listened to the bearded man.
“Less weird and more along the lines of reality is “The Street.” It’s the tale of a singular street (always referred to only as The Street) from its infancy in colonial times to what I assume is the modern era. From the building of The Street itself to the houses that line it and the people that walk it, the story chronicles the times and changes that The Street endures, to the point that houses crumble and “sinister men” start taking over and eventually begin plotting against the country until the very houses on The Street take matters into their own hands and tumble down upon them.
Joshi’s introduction to this story describes it as a “xenophobic allegory about the overrunning of America by seditious immigrants,” and yes, it pretty much is. It’s not hard to infer what Lovecraft is talking about at all. On one side of the coin, it’s a very interesting read and you can picture the building of this place, the people in it, and how it has changed and then degraded over time. Yet flip the coin over and look at those evil immigrants not from the Mother Land (re: Anglo-Saxon England). I wonder if in his time, that particular face of the coin assisted in making this horror, if in fact that was Lovecraft’s goal or anyone’s interpretation. The only real horror or supernatural element here is the decision of The Street to wipe out all these “terrorists.” It’s the kind of story that could be salvaged into something else potentially interesting by one of today’s writers, but as it stands now, it is what it is, and thus we will move on.
Featured image © Nicole Taft
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