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The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

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"The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft
Country USA
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Horror short story
Publication
Published inWeird Tales
Publication typePeriodical
Media typePrint (Magazine)
Publication dateMay-July, 1941
Halsey House at 140 Prospect Street, built in 1801 by Colonel Thomas Lloyd Halsey. This served as the Ward house in the story.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a novel by H. P. Lovecraft written in early 1927, set in Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. It was first published (in abridged form) in the May and July issues of Weird Tales in 1941; the first complete publication was in Arkham House's Beyond the Wall of Sleep collection (1943).

Inspiration

In August 1925, Lovecraft's Aunt Lillian sent him an anecdote about the house at 140 Prospect Street in Providence. Lovecraft wrote back: "So the Halsey house is haunted! Ugh! That's where Wild Tom Halsey kept live terrapins in the cellar--maybe it's their ghosts. Anyway, it's a magnificent old mansion, & a credit to a magnificent old town!"[1] Lovecraft would make this house--renumbered as 100 Prospect--the basis for the Ward house in Charles Dexter Ward.

The following month, September 1925, Lovecraft read Providence in Colonial Times, by Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, a 1912 history that provided him with aspects of Charles Dexter Ward, such as the anecdotes about John Merritt and Dr. Checkley.[2]

A possible literary model is Walter de la Mare's novel The Return (1910), which Lovecraft read in mid-1926. He describes it in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" as a tale in which "we see the soul of a dead man reach out of its grave of two centuries and fasten itself on the flesh of the living".[3]

The theme of a descendant who closely resembles a distant ancestor may come from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, which Lovecraft called "New England's greatest contribution to weird literature" in "Supernatural Horror in Literature".[4]

Another proposed literary source is M. R. James' short story "Count Magnus", also praised in "Supernatural Horror in Literature", which suggests the resurrection of a sinister 17th century figure.[5]

Reaction

Lovecraft was displeased with the novel, calling it a "cumbrous, creaking bit of self-conscious antiquarianism".[6] He made little effort to publish the work, leaving it to be published posthumously in Weird Tales by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

Plot summary

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The titular character, Charles Dexter Ward, is a young man from a prominent Rhode Island family who (in the story's introduction) is said to have disappeared from a mental asylum after a prolonged period of insanity accompanied by minor, but unheard-of, physiological changes. The bulk of the story concerns the investigation conducted by the Wards' family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willett, in an attempt to discover the reason for Ward's madness and the physiological changes. When Willett learns that Ward had spent the past several years attempting to discover the grave of his ill-reputed ancestor, Joseph Curwen, the doctor slowly begins to unravel the truth behind the legends surrounding Curwen, an eighteenth century shipping entrepreneur rumoured to have been an alchemist, but in reality a necromancer and mass-murderer.

As Willett's investigations proceed, he finds that Charles had recovered Curwen's ashes, and through the use of magical formulae contained in documents found hidden in the wizard's former town house in Providence, Rhode Island, was able to call forth Curwen from his "essential salts" and resurrect him. Willett also finds that Curwen, who resembles Ward sufficiently closely to pass for him, has murdered and replaced his modern descendant and resumed his evil activities. Unfortunately for Curwen, due to culture shock, he is unable to entirely successfully impersonate Ward - his lack of understanding of the modern world leads to him (as Ward) being certified insane and imprisoned in an asylum.

While Curwen is locked up, Willett's continuing investigations lead him to a bungalow in Pawtuxet Village, which Ward had purchased under the influence of Curwen. It turns out that this house is on the site of an old farm which was Curwen's headquarters for his nefarious doings and beneath is a vast catacomb that the wizard had built to serve as his lair during his previous lifetime. During a horrific journey through this labyrinth, Willet discovers the full truth about Curwen's crimes and also the means of returning him to the grave. During the expedition it is also revealed that Curwen has been engaged in a long-term conspiracy with certain other necromancers (associates from his previous life who have somehow escaped death) to raise and torture the world's wisest people in order to gain knowledge that will let them gain horrible power and threaten the future of mankind. Finally, while in Curwen's laboratory, Willett accidentally raises an ancient spirit (its identity is not made clear though it is intimated by the text to be Merlin of Arthurian legend) which is an enemy of Curwen and his fellow necromancers. The doctor faints at this eventuality: he wakes up back in the bungalow. Willett finds that the entrance to the vaults has been sealed as if it had never existed, he also finds a note from the spirit written in Latin in an Anglo-Saxon hand telling him to kill Curwen and destroy his body.

Armed with this knowledge, Willett confronts Curwen at the asylum and succeeds in reversing the spell, reducing the undead sorcerer once again to dust. A gust of wind blows Curwen's ashes out of the window, ensuring that he can never threaten the world again. News reports reveal that Curwen's prime co-conspirators have met brutal deaths along with their households and their lairs have been destroyed, presumably the work of the spirit whom Willett raised.

Much of the plot is revealed in letters, documents and other historical sources discovered by both Ward and Willett.

Characters

Charles Dexter Ward

Ward is born in 1902; he is 26 in 1928, at the time the story takes place.

Though considered one of Lovecraft's autobiographical characters, some details of the character seem to be based on William Lippitt Mauran, who lived in the Halsey house and, like Ward, was "wheeled...in a carriage" in front of it. Like the Wards, the Maurans also owned a farmhouse in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island.[3]

Joseph Curwen

Description

Ward's ancestor, born in present-day Danvers, Massachusetts, seven miles from Salem, on February 18th, 1662. He flees to Providence from the Salem witch trials in 1692. He dies, at least temporarily, in 1771 when he is killed in the course of a raid on his lair by a group of important Providence citizens who have got wind of only a few of his crimes. In his first life, Curwen was a successful merchant, shipping magnate, slave trader and a highly accomplished sorcerer. His magical powers are extensive. He has perfected a method of reducing the effects of aging so that by the time of his first death, when he was over a century old he still appeared to be in his early forties, at the most. He has the ability to raise the dead and converse with them, though to do so he must have the complete corpse which must be prepared in a special way to reduce it to the "essential salts". He is able to summon Mythos entities such as the god Yog-Sothoth to assist him in his magic, it also seems clear that he was able to find a way to create a spell that would transcend time and inspire a descendant to become interested in him and his work and attempt to bring him back should he ever be slain.

Curwen makes extensive use of the resurrection spell to gain historical and occult knowledge. To this end his agents scour the graveyards and tombs of the world for illustrious corpses which are then smuggled back to Providence where Curwen temporarily raises them and tortures their secrets out of them. In this endeavour he is assisted by two fellow necromancers and Salem exiles; Simon Orne, alias Joseph Nadeh, who lives in Prague, and Edward Hutchinson, who masquerades as Baron Ferenczy in Transylvania. These three, and an unknown accomplice in Philadelphia, are engaged in a vast conspiracy to use their ill-gotten knowledge to achieve ever greater powers for themselves.

When later resurrected by Ward, Curwen initially goes in disguise as "Dr. Allen" to avoid suspicion being aroused by his close resemblance to Ward. The undead Curwen shows vampiristic tendencies, attacking local travellers and breaking into houses to drink the blood of the inhabitants. It is not clear if this is a consequence of the spell or just a feature of Curwen himself for other reasons as the necessity for blood drinking is not otherwise mentioned as necessary to the operation of the magic. Curwen immediately makes contact with Orne and Hutchinson, who have been alive and active all the while, and starts up his old plots once again. He soon murders Ward when he starts having doubts about what they are doing and assumes his identity.

Assessment

Curwen is a man of great cunning, foresight and intelligence, he is also a man of boundless arrogance and cruelty. Aside from his black magic and graverobbery, Curwen never hesitates to stoop to murder, torture or blackmail to achieve his ends, he also uses - and kills - vast numbers of living slaves as subjects for his experiments. He is, in sum, utterly evil.

Intriguingly, the ultimate goal of Curwen's activities is not completely specified and its interpretation is largely left to the reader. This ambiguity also affects, notably, the exact circumstances of Curwen's "first death". It seems clear, however, that his pursuits are at least remotely akin to those of Wilbur Whateley and his grandfather, albeit with a probably far larger psychopathic and/or megalomaniac component. The closest thing to a description of Curwen's aims is contained in a passage describing the ashes central to his experiments:

Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, "all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe"?

Joseph Curwen may be inscribed in the line of characters, including both villains and antiheroes, notable for their individualistic or egocentric demeanor, higher-than-average intelligence or charisma and usually low moral standards, who manage to deal actively with evil, unknown forces while at the same time avoiding the negative side-effects of such activities -- even if the latter do affect a variable amount of innocent people. Further examples of this archetype are Obed Marsh, Alijah Billington, Ephraim Waite and Walter de la Poer and, to a lesser extent, Old Whateley.

Despite Curwen's evil pursuits, he was still a complex man. The early biography given of him portrayed him as, while aloof from most social pursuits, a man possessed of some civic spirit and decency; he contributed to the funding of many civic expansion projects of his town, such as paving roads and building or rebuilding civic features and he treated his wife, whom he married to primarily produce an heir to lessen the public dislike of him, with remarkable grace and courtesy. His letters to his associate necromancers also show a great deal of warmth, giving him as a man who was not without human feelings.

Marinus Bicknell Willett

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia compares Willett's character to other "valiant counterweight[s]" in Lovecraft such as Thomas Malone in "The Horror at Red Hook" (1925)[2] and Henry Armitage in "The Dunwich Horror"; like Willett, Armitage "defeats the 'villains' by incantations, and he is susceptible to the same flaws--pomposity, arrogance, self-importance--that can be seen in Willett."[7]

Literary references

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward contains reference to a number of books and authors, both real and fictitious. Most of them are presented in chapter II, when Joseph Curwen's 17th-century library is being inspected by Mr. Merrit. They include:

Cthulhu Mythos

Charles Dexter Ward contains the first mention of the Cthulhu Mythos entity Yog-Sothoth, who appears repeatedly as an element in an incantation. Joseph Curwen is the owner of a copy of the Necronomicon (disguised as a book labelled Qanoon-e-Islam) and there are hints of cult activities in a fishing village that refer obliquely to the events narrated in "The Festival". The story also contains references to the Dream Cycle: Dr. Willett notices the "Sign of Koth" chiselled above a doorway, and remembers his friend Randolph Carter drawing the sign and explaining its powers and meaning.

Brian Lumley expanded on the character of Baron Ferenczy, mentioned but never met in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, in his Necroscope series, specifically Book IV: Deadspeak, where Janos Ferenczy uses the Yog-Sothoth formula to call forth whole bodies from ash remains, and to return them to that state.

Adaptations

  • In 2001, DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. published a videogame adaptation for the PC (developed by Wanadoo Edition) under the name Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness. All the character's names from the book were changed, as well as the ending.

Other Appearances

  • The American death metal band Nile has a song called "The Essential Salts" on their 2007 CD Ithyphallic, which contains references to the Necronomicon and the practice of summoning a body from a person's "essential salts."

Publications

  • At the Mountains of Madness, and Other Novels (hardcover), S. T. Joshi (ed.), Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1985. ISBN 0-87054-038-6. Definitive version.
  • The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (paperback) published by Del Rey, ISBN 0-345-35490-7.
  • Waking up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror (mass market paperback) published by Del Rey, 2003. ISBN 978-0345458292
  • In Fall 2009 Open Circle Theater in Seattle is producing an original adaptation of Charles Dexter Ward for the stage, using Lovecraft's original title, Madness Out of Time. Source: www.OCTheater.com

References

  1. ^ H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Lillian D. Clark, August 24, 1925; cited in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The", An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p. 33.
  2. ^ a b Joshi and Schultz, p. 33.
  3. ^ a b Cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 33.
  4. ^ Joshi and Schultz, p. 107.
  5. ^ Richard Ward, "In Search of the Dread Ancestor", Lovecraft Studies No. 36 (Spring 1997); cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 131.
  6. ^ H. P. Lovecraft, letter to R. H. Barlow, March 19, 1934; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 34.
  7. ^ S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Dunwich Horror, The", An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p. 81.

Electronic Texts

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