Like its eponymous hermit, “The Horrible Outdated Man” could also be slight, but it surely packs a beautiful wallop – particularly for an early Lovecraft story. Leslie S. Klinger notes that it’s “the shortest of any of Lovecraft’s vital tales,” and Ruthanna Emrys lauds it as “a exceptional factor: a succinct Lovecraft story. It’s a bit of minimalist brushwork, with a lot of the narrative prompt by damaging house.” Regardless of its brief stature – weighing in at a mere 1,142 phrases – it’s universally thought-about probably the most efficient tales from this era in his profession. Its brevity, topic, tone, and self-control all belie the 2 writers who most instantly influenced it: Lord Dunsany and Ambrose Bierce.
A lot of Dunsany’s tales observe the misadventures of thieves, usually in teams, with “The Possible Journey of Three Literary Males” being most much like Lovecraft’s story. It additionally instantly influenced “The Anonymous Metropolis” (which was written nearly precisely one 12 months later, in January 1921) with its story of three bards who resolve to raid the ruins of a long-deserted subterranean metropolis searching for a storied cache of forgotten poetry, solely to satisfy with destruction, by no means to be heard from once more. Dunsany additionally lends his Okaying James-y, “quaint and curious quantity of forgotten lore” type of prose, alongside along with his tendency for disciplined subtlety, tauntingly unresolved endings, and vapory allusions to barely seen horrors.
Ambrose Bierce was seemingly liable for the subject material – ghost pirates, pirate hoards, and sinister hermits – which characteristic most prominently in his ghost story, “The Isle of Pines,” whereby a trio of grasping robbers resolve to ransack the cabin of a not too long ago deceased mariner – broadly suspected of piracy and recognized for paying for his items with prepared money – just for disaster to strike them.
It was additionally very seemingly influenced by Washington Irving’s two well-known piracy tales: “Golden Desires” and “Friends at Gibbet Island.” Within the first, three treasure hunters slobber over the tales of pirate gold which the native crank – a horrible previous man with cutlass scars and a fastidiously guarded chest – shares on the village inn. When he disappears throughout a storm, they sally forth at evening to uncover his hoard utilizing the clues he dropped, however they discover themselves tracked after which chased down by what appears to be his ghost, resulting in a horrible accident. Within the second, a broody abolitionist parable, a pirate who retired and grew rich from the slave commerce, is hounded by the ghoulish figures of three of his hanged crewmates, who come to gather him with their nooses nonetheless cinched round their throats.
Whereas Lovecraft is rarely express in regards to the Horrible Outdated Man’s piratical profession, it’s definitely hinted at, and in any case, his imprecise curriculum vitae advantages the story by leaving a lot to the creativeness. What outcomes is a narrative that succeeds rather more from what it chooses to obscure than from the few particulars it permits us to glimpse – like a pair of watchful eyes gleaming by way of the nightfall.
The story, which takes place within the sleepy, Massachusetts delivery city of Kingsport, begins with the comment that three males – Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek, and Manuel Silva – have decided to go to the Horrible Outdated Man – a neighborhood hermit who “dwells on their own in a really historical home … close to the ocean, and is reputed to be each exceedingly wealthy and exceedingly feeble.” This, the narrator observes, is a two-fold perk for the lads, as a result of they’re skilled robbers.
The Horrible Outdated Man is a neighborhood enigma: nobody alive remembers him being younger, and his background is obscure and topic to speculative rumors. The precept perception is that he turned wealthy as a captain of East Indian clipper ships, however eavesdroppers and snoops have darker theories: they observe that:
“Among the many gnarled timber within the entrance yard of his aged and uncared for place he maintains a wierd assortment of huge stones, oddly grouped and painted in order that they resemble the idols in some obscure Jap temple…”
and far commentary is directed at his weird assortment of bottles, every of which seems to comprise a small lead ball which is suspended from the cork like a pendulum by a bit of string. That is innocuous sufficient, however the peeping toms have reported that:
“the Horrible Outdated Man talks to those bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Lengthy Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that at any time when he speaks to a bottle the little lead pendulum inside makes sure particular vibrations as if in reply. Those that have watched the tall, lean, Horrible Outdated Man in these peculiar conversations, don’t watch him once more.”
Typically, the Horrible Outdated Man is feared however revered by the locals – reviled however left alone – and since he pays for his items (suspiciously) in vintage gold doubloons, his monetary solvency has lent him a imprecise sense of gentility, although his utter creepiness prevents him from having buddies or firm.
Ricci, Czanek, and Silva, nevertheless, are foreigners (being Italian, Polish, and Portuguese, respectively), and share not one of the Kingsport locals’ fearful reverence. They plan to “interview” (viz., beat and interrogate) the previous fellow with the goal of studying the place he retains his seemingly limitless horde of gold cash. One quiet evening – approaching from three totally different instructions – they converge on the previous man’s distant cottage, the sight of which – and “the best way the moon shone upon the painted stones” – briefly repels them, however they’re decided, and Ricci and Silva knock on the door after peeking in and overhearing the hermit “speaking childishly to his bottles with pendulums.” They’re admitted inside whereas Czanek retains watch from the getaway automotive.
His wait is lengthy and anxious. The extra “tender-hearted” of the three, he hates to think about the brutality with which his buddies are treating the demented eccentric, and turns into repulsed by the “hideous screams” that he hears coming from contained in the cottage, recalling that he had warned “his colleagues to be as light as doable with the pathetic previous sea-captain.” However Ricci and Silva’s interrogation doesn’t appear to be going properly despite their obvious violence: he retains checking his watch and questioning once they’ll return, and he doesn’t “like to attend so lengthy in the dead of night in such a spot.”
Lastly, he hears the sound of footsteps developing the stroll from the previous man’s home, and the entrance gate swings open, however he doesn’t see his buddies:
“within the pallid glow of the one dim street-lamp he strained his eyes to see what his colleagues had introduced out of that sinister home which loomed so shut behind. However when he seemed, he didn’t see what he had anticipated; for his colleagues weren’t there in any respect, however solely the Horrible Outdated Man leaning quietly on his knotted cane and smiling hideously. Mr. Czanek had by no means earlier than seen the color of that man’s eyes; now he noticed that they have been yellow.”
Leaping ahead in time, the narrator placidly observes how “little issues make appreciable pleasure in little cities,” recalling how Kingsport was animated with gossip all that spring and summer season when three corpses have been washed up on the shore, savagely mutilated (“horribly slashed as if by many cutlasses and horribly mangled as by the tread of many merciless boot-heels”) past recognition. Others gossiped in regards to the deserted automotive discovered close to the previous man’s home, or in regards to the “sure particularly inhuman cries” heard that evening. However the Horrible Outdated Man is disinterested within the gossip:
“He was by nature reserved, and when one is aged and feeble one’s reserve is doubly robust. Apart from, so historical a sea-captain should have witnessed scores of issues rather more stirring within the far-off days of his unremembered youth.”
Past its tightly-written, cinematic aesthetics, “The Horrible Outdated Man” is, sadly, most noteworthy for its xenophobic subtext as an ethnic revenge narrative. Peter Cannon most famously and succinctly addressed its hateful nature by calling it “little greater than a polemic towards the intrusion of individuals Lovecraft thought to be ‘foreigners’, that’s, the non-English immigrants who arrived within the nineteenth century as low-cost labor to fill the factories of an more and more industrialized America.”
The three victims are immigrants – a Portuguese, Pole, and Italian – who’ve turned to crime as a way to thrive of their new nation. To them, crime seems to be their pure occupation, and as Lovecraft places it, “enterprise is enterprise.” They view the Horrible Outdated Man’s treasured and mysterious horde as ripe, unwatched produce match to be harvested by enterprising souls. By advantage of merely current in Kingsport, with out having bothered to be taught its methods or develop a respect for its tradition (and that is Lovecraft’s perspective, thoughts), they think about themselves worthy of its legacy and consider its acquisition as a matter of truth and kind. They consider theft as an method of conducting work, describing their plan to torture the previous man as an “interview” and their plot to rob him of his financial savings as a mere “design.”
For Lovecraft, the blue-collar, non-Anglo immigrant class flip to crime as naturally as they breathe, and their second best misstep is that they underestimate the native New Englanders as “pathetic” and “weak” – excellent prey for crafty criminals who’re intrepid sufficient to show theft into entrepreneurship. By dismissing the locals usually – and the Horrible Outdated Man specifically – they fail to suspect what lurks beneath the floor: how did this previous man purchase a lot wealth?
The identical could possibly be stated of New England usually, for it turned the monetary heart of america up by way of the early twentieth century by way of a mix of vicious competitors, aggressive commerce, infamous stinginess, and involvement in a lot of shameful enterprises, starting from unfair labor and smuggling to slave buying and selling and piracy.
Certainly, the Horrible Outdated Man will not be revealed to be some benign energy, or to be protected by angels or guardian ghosts: his wolfish look and savage, predatory nature is at odds with a extra conservative, nationalistic understanding of “good, previous Yankee inventory.” As a substitute, it appears to acknowledge the darkness inherent in New England historical past, and to forged the Outdated Man (and therefore, the spirit of Anglo New England itself) as a sinister villain – unquestionably evil and positively not somebody price emulating – alongside the traces of Dracula or Dr. Jekyll.
To Lovecraft, the ethical – whereas definitely nonetheless racist – can maintain this unsavory view of Outdated New England in rigidity with its anti-immigrant message. As Joshi places it in An Epicure within the Horrible: “[the story] reveals two … major themes: that of illusory floor appearances (the previous man seems weak and helpless to the robbers however seems to be nothing of the type) and that of unwholesome survival (the previous man, like sure different Lovecraft characters, is older than anybody ought to naturally be).”
Quite than some good, grey patriarch, we discover a hibernating satan ensconced within the coronary heart of New England society, consumed with the previous (solely talking, as he does, to what we should assume are the captured souls of his previous crewmates, and doing so with “infantile” delight), however simply as able to lashing out at threats to his peaceable somnolence.
No matter spell he realized abroad to maintain himself (and the spirits of his males) alive for longer than anybody can keep in mind is immaterial, and Lovecraft does properly by avoiding the weeds of over-explanation. All that does matter is the core narrative that whoever this man is and no matter he represents, it’s treacherous, insidious, and savage, and to underestimate him for his age and obvious indifference is to ask catastrophe. Though Lovecraft sadly pollutes an in any other case compelling story along with his xenophobic nonsense, it’s simple that inside its few pages lurks an ironic parable of the perils that include prejudice of any form: the place the bandits anticipated to discover a feeble senior citizen, they encountered a savvy predator.
Likewise, regardless of Lovecraft’s half-hearted makes an attempt to color his trio of gangsters as knavish thugs, they arrive throughout as clever, likeable, and naïvely optimistic: their plans are well-developed, their logic sound, and their execution nearly surgical. Certainly, their nervous getaway driver – “greater than ordinarily tender-hearted” – is downright human, and his destiny is regretted by any reader whose gravestone doesn’t pompously learn “I AM PROVIDENCE.”
If something, Lovecraft has painted a extremely unfavorable portrait of White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant New England, as a grasping, perfidious, savage, unsporting tradition feeding off of its immigrant courses like a bloated, previous spider snaring industrious, younger flies to maintain itself alive long gone the expiration date. No matter whether or not you discover this story offensive or insightful – or insightfully offensive – it’s tough to disclaim that it has earned its place of honor as a strong and efficient entry within the canon of American horror fiction.
