Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family

by H. P. Lovecraft

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of itpeer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold morehideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhapsbe the ultimate exterminator of our human speciesif separate species we beforits reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosedupon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did;and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.No one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who hadbeen; for certain papers and a certain boxed object were found which made menwish to forget. Some who knew him do not admit that he ever existed.Arthur Jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxedobject which had come from Africa. It was this object, and not his peculiarpersonal appearance, which made him end his life. Many would have disliked tolive if possessed of the peculiar features of Arthur Jermyn, but he had been apoet and scholar and had not minded. Learning was in his blood, for hisgreat-grandfather, Sir Robert Jermyn, Bt., had been an anthropologist of note,whilst his great-great-great-grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn, was one of theearliest explorers of the Congo region, and had written eruditely of its tribes,animals, and supposed antiquities. Indeed, old Sir Wade had possessed anintellectual zeal amounting almost to a mania; his bizarre conjectures on aprehistoric white Congolese civilisation earning him much ridicule when hisbook, Observation on the Several Parts of Africa, was published. In 1765 thisfearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at Huntingdon.Madness was in all the Jermyns, and people were glad there were not many ofthem. The line put forth no branches, and Arthur was the last of it. If he hadnot been, one can not say what he would have done when the object came. TheJermyns never seemed to look quite rightsomething was amiss, though Arthur wasthe worst, and the old family portraits in Jermyn House showed fine faces enoughbefore Sir Wades time. Certainly, the madness began with Sir Wade, whose wildstories of Africa were at once the delight and terror of his few friends. Itshowed in his collection of trophies and specimens, which were not such as anormal man would accumulate and preserve, and appeared strikingly in theOriental seclusion in which he kept his wife. The latter, he had said, was thedaughter of a Portuguese trader whom he had met in Africa; and did not likeEnglish ways. She, with an infant son born in Africa, had accompanied him backfrom the second and longest of his trips, and had gone with him on the third andlast, never returning. No one had ever seen her closely, not even the servants;for her disposition had been violent and singular. During her brief stay atJermyn House she occupied a remote wing, and was waited on by her husband alone.Sir Wade was, indeed, most peculiar in his solicitude for his family; for whenhe returned to Africa he would permit no one to care for his young son save aloathsome black woman from Guinea. Upon coming back, after the death of LadyJermyn, he himself assumed complete care of the boy.But it was the talk of Sir Wade, especially when in his cups, which chieflyled his friends to deem him mad. In a rational age like the eighteenth centuryit was unwise for a man of learning to talk about wild sights and strange scenesunder a Congo moon; of the gigantic walls and pillars of a forgotten city,crumbling and vine-grown, and of damp, silent, stone steps leading interminablydown into the darkness of abysmal treasure-vaults and inconceivable catacombs.Especially was it unwise to rave of the living things that might haunt such aplace; of creatures half of the jungle and half of the impiously agedcityfabulous creatures which even a Pliny might describe with scepticism;things that might have sprung up after the great apes had overrun the dying citywith the walls and the pillars, the vaults and the weird carvings. Yet after hecame home for the last time Sir Wade would speak of such matters with ashudderingly uncanny zest, mostly after his third glass at the Knights Head;boasting of what he had found in the jungle and of how he had dwelt amongterrible ruins known only to him. And finally he had spoken of the living thingsin such a manner that he was taken to the madhouse. He had shown little regretwhen shut into the barred room at Huntingdon, for his mind moved curiously. Eversince his son had commenced to grow out of infancy, he had liked his home lessand less, till at last he had seemed to dread it. The Knights Head had been hisheadquarters, and when he was confined he expressed some vague gratitude as iffor protection. Three years later he died.Wade Jermyns son Philip was a highly peculiar person. Despite a strongphysical resemblance to his father, his appearance and conduct were in manyparticulars so coarse that he was universally shunned. Though he did not inheritthe madness which was feared by some, he was densely stupid and given to briefperiods of uncontrollable violence. In frame he was small, but intenselypowerful, and was of incredible agility. Twelve years after succeeding to histitle he married the daughter of his gamekeeper, a person said to be of gypsyextraction, but before his son was born joined the navy as a common sailor,completing the general disgust which his habits and misalliance had begun. Afterthe close of the American war he was heard of as sailor on a merchantman in theAfrican trade, having a kind of reputation for feats of strength and climbing,but finally disappearing one night as his ship lay off the Congo coast.In the son of Sir Philip Jermyn the now accepted family peculiarity took astrange and fatal turn. Tall and fairly handsome, with a sort of weird Easterngrace despite certain slight oddities of proportion, Robert Jermyn began life asa scholar and investigator. It was he who first studied scientifically the vastcollection of relics which his mad grandfather had brought from Africa, and whomade the family name as celebrated in ethnology as in exploration. In 1815 SirRobert married a daughter of the seventh Viscount Brightholme and wassubsequently blessed with three children, the eldest and youngest of whom werenever publicly seen on account of deformities in mind and body. Saddened bythese family misfortunes, the scientist sought relief in work, and made two longexpeditions in the interior of Africa. In 1849 his second son, Nevil, asingularly repellent person who seemed to combine the surliness of Philip Jermynwith the hauteur of the Brightholmes, ran away with a vulgar dancer, but waspardoned upon his return in the following year. He came back to Jermyn House awidower with an infant son, Alfred, who was one day to be the father of ArthurJermyn.Friends said that it was this series of griefs which unhinged the mind ofSir Robert Jermyn, yet it was probably merely a bit of African folklore whichcaused the disaster. The elderly scholar had been collecting legends of the Ongatribes near the field of his grandfathers and his own explorations, hoping insome way to account for Sir Wades wild tales of a lost city peopled by strangehybrid creatures. A certain consistency in the strange papers of his ancestorsuggested that the madmans imagination might have been stimulated by nativemyths. On October 19, 1852, the explorer Samuel Seaton called at Jermyn Housewith a manuscript of notes collected among the Ongas, believing that certainlegends of a gray city of white apes ruled by a white god might prove valuableto the ethnologist. In his conversation he probably supplied many additionaldetails; the nature of which will never be known, since a hideous series oftragedies suddenly burst into being. When Sir Robert Jermyn emerged from hislibrary he left behind the strangled corpse of the explorer, and before he couldbe restrained, had put an end to all three of his children; the two who werenever seen, and the son who had run away. Nevil Jermyn died in the successfuldefence of his own two-year-old son, who had apparently been included in the oldmans madly murderous scheme. Sir Robert himself, after repeated attempts atsuicide and a stubborn refusal to utter an articulate sound, died of apoplexy inthe second year of his confinement.Sir Alfred Jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday, but his tastesnever matched his title. At twenty he had joined a band of music-hallperformers, and at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with anitinerant American circus. His end was very revolting. Among the animals in theexhibition with which he travelled was a huge bull gorilla of lighter colourthan the average; a surprisingly tractable beast of much popularity with theperformers. With this gorilla Alfred Jermyn was singularly fascinated, and onmany occasions the two would eye each other for long periods through theintervening bars. Eventually Jermyn asked and obtained permission to train theanimal,, astonishing audiences and fellow performers alike with his success. Onemorning in Chicago, as the gorilla and Alfred Jermyn were rehearsing anexceedingly clever boxing match, the former delivered a blow of more than theusual force, hurting both the body and the dignity of the amateur trainer. Ofwhat followed, members of The Greatest Show On Earth do not like to speak.They did not expect to hear Sir Alfred Jermyn emit a shrill, inhuman scream, orto see him seize his clumsy antagonist with both hands, dash it to the floor ofthe cage, and bite fiendishly at its hairy throat. The gorilla was off itsguard, but not for long, and before anything could be done by the regulartrainer, the body which had belonged to a baronet was past recognition.IIArthur Jermyn was the son of Sir Alfred Jermyn and a music-hall singer ofunknown origin. When the husband and father deserted his family, the mother tookthe child to Jermyn House; where there was none left to object to her presence.She was not without notions of what a noblemans dignity should be, and saw toit that her son received the best education which limited money could provide.The family resources were now sadly slender, and Jermyn House had fallen intowoeful disrepair, but young Arthur loved the old edifice and all its contents.He was not like any other Jermyn who had ever lived, for he was a poet and adreamer. Some of the neighbouring families who had heard tales of old Sir WadeJermyns unseen Portuguese wife declared that her Latin blood must be showingitself; but most persons merely sneered at his sensitiveness to beauty,attributing it to his music-hall mother, who was socially unrecognised. Thepoetic delicacy of Arthur Jermyn was the more remarkable because of his uncouthpersonal appearance. Most of the Jermyns had possessed a subtly odd andrepellent cast, but Arthurs case was very striking. It is hard to say just whathe resembled, but his expression, his facial angle, and the length of his armsgave a thrill of repulsion to those who met him for the first time.It was the mind and character of Arthur Jermyn which atoned for his aspect.Gifted and learned, he took highest honours at Oxford and seemed likely toredeem the intellectual fame of his family. Though of poetic rather thanscientific temperament, he planned to continue the work of his forefathers inAfrican ethnology and antiquities, utilising the truly wonderful though strangecollection of Sir Wade. With his fanciful mind he thought often of theprehistoric civilisation in which the mad explorer had so implicitly believed,and would weave tale after tale about the silent jungle city mentioned in thelatters wilder notes and paragraphs. For the nebulous utterances concerning anameless, unsuspected race of jungle hybrids he had a peculiar feeling ofmingled terror and attraction, speculating on the possible basis of such afancy, and seeking to obtain light among the more recent data gleaned by hisgreat-grandfather and Samuel Seaton amongst the Ongas.In 1911, after the death of his mother, Sir Arthur Jermyn determined topursue his investigations to the utmost extent. Selling a portion of his estateto obtain the requisite money, he outfitted an expedition and sailed for theCongo. Arranging with the Belgian authorities for a party of guides, he spent ayear in the Onga and Kahn country, finding data beyond the highest of hisexpectations. Among the Kaliris was an aged chief called Mwanu, who possessednot only a highly retentive memory, but a singular degree of intelligence andinterest in old legends. This ancient confirmed every tale which Jermyn hadheard, adding his own account of the stone city and the white apes as it hadbeen told to him.According to Mwanu, the gray city and the hybrid creatures were no more,having been annihilated by the warlike Nbangus many years ago. This tribe,after destroying most of the edifices and killing the live beings, had carriedoff the stuffed goddess which had been the object of their quest; the whiteape-goddess which the strange beings worshipped, and which was held by Congotradition to be the form of one who had reigned as a princess among thesebeings. Just what the white apelike creatures could have been, Mwanu had noidea, but he thought they were the builders of the ruined city. Jermyn couldform no conjecture, but by close questioning obtained a very picturesque legendof the s.tuffed goddess.The ape-princess, it was said, became the consort of a great white god whohad come out of the West. For a long time they had reigned over the citytogether, but when they had a son, all three went away. Later the god andprincess had returned, and upon the death of the princess her divine husband hadmummified the body and enshrined it in a vast house of stone, where it wasworshipped. Then he departed alone. The legend here seemed to present threevariants. According to one story, nothing further happened save that the stuffedgoddess became a symbol of supremacy for whatever tribe might possess it. It wasfor this reason that the Nbangus carried it off. A second story told of a godsreturn and death at the feet of his enshrined wife. A third told of the returnof the son, grown to manhoodor apehood or godhood, as the case might beyetunconscious of his identity. Surely the imaginative blacks had made the most ofwhatever events might lie behind the extravagant legendry.Of the reality of the jungle city described by old Sir Wade, Arthur Jermynhad no further doubt; and was hardly astonished when early in 1912 he came uponwhat was left of it. Its size must have been exaggerated, yet the stones lyingabout proved that it was no mere Negro village. Unfortunately no carvings couldbe found, and the small size of the expedition prevented operations towardclearing the one visible passageway that seemed to lead down into the system ofvaults which Sir Wade had mentioned. The white apes and the stuffed goddess werediscussed with all the native chiefs of the region, but it remained for aEuropean to improve on the data offered by old Mwanu. M. Verhaeren, Belgianagent at a trading-post on theCongo, believed that he could not only locate but obtain the stuffedgoddess, of which he had vaguely heard; since the once mighty Nbangus were nowthe submissive servants of King Alberts government, and with but littlepersuasion could be induced to part with the gruesome deity they had carriedoff. When Jermyn sailed for England, therefore, it was with the exultantprobability that he would within a few months receive a priceless ethnologicalrelic confirming the wildest of his great-great-great-grandfathersnarrativesthat is, the wildest which he had ever heard. Countrymen near JermynHouse had perhaps heard wilder tales handed down from ancestors who had listenedto Sir Wade around the tables of the Knights Head.Arthur Jermyn waited very patiently for the expected box from M. Verhaeren,meanwhile studying with increased diligence the manuscripts left by his madancestor. He began to feel closely akin to Sir Wade, and to seek relics of thelatters personal life in England as well as of his African exploits. Oralaccounts of the mysterious and secluded wife had been numerous, but no tangiblerelic of her stay at Jermyn House remained. Jermyn wondered what circumstancehad prompted or permitted such an effacement, and decided that the husbandsinsanity was the prime cause. His great-great-great-grandmother, he recalled,was said to have been the daughter of a Portuguese trader in Africa. No doubther practical heritage and superficial knowledge of the Dark Continent hadcaused her to flout Sir Wades tales of the interior, a thing which such a manwould not be likely to forgive. She had died in Africa, perhaps dragged thitherby a husband determined to prove what he had told. But as Jermyn indulged inthese reflections he could not but smile at their futility, a century and a halfafter the death of both his strange progenitors.In June, 1913, a letter arrived from M. Verhaeren, telling of the finding ofthe stuffed goddess. It was, the Belgian averred, a most extraordinary object;an object quite beyond the power of a layman to classify. Whether it was humanor simian only a scientist could determine, and the process of determinationwould be greatly hampered by its imperfect condition. Time and the Congo climateare not kind to mummies; especially when their preparation is as amateurish asseemed to be the case here. Around the creatures neck had been found a goldenchain bearing an empty locket on which were armorial designs; no doubt somehapless travellers keepsake, taken by the Nbangus and hung upon the goddess asa charm. In commenting on the contour of the mummys face, M. Verhaerensuggested a whimsical comparison; or rather, expressed a humorous wonder justhow it would strike his corespondent, but was too much interested scientificallyto waste many words in levity. The stuffed. goddess, he wrote, would arrive dulypacked about a month after receipt of the letter.The boxed object was delivered at Jermyn House on the afternoon of August 3,1913, being conveyed immediately to the large chamber which housed thecollection of African specimens as arranged by Sir Robert and Arthur. Whatensued can best be gathered from the tales of servants and from things andpapers later examined. Of the various tales, that of aged Soames, the familybutler, is most ample and coherent. According to this trustworthy man, SirArthur Jermyn dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box, thoughthe instant sound of hammer and chisel showed that he did not delay theoperation. Nothing was heard for some time; just how long Soames cannot exactlyestimate, but it was certainly less than a quarter of an hour later that thehorrible scream, undoubtedly in Jermyns voice, was heard. Immediately afterwardJermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically toward the front of the houseas if pursued by some hideous enemy. The expression on his face, a face ghastlyenough in repose, was beyond description. When near the front door he seemed tothink of something, and turned back in his flight, finally disappearing down thestairs to the cellar. The servants were utterly dumbfounded, and watched at thehead of the stairs, but their master did not return. A smell of oil was all thatcame up from the regions below. After dark a rattling was heard at the doorleading from the cellar into the courtyard; and a stable-boy saw Arthur Jermyn,glistening from head to foot with oil and redolent of that fluid, stealfurtively out and vanish on the black moor surrounding the house. Then, in anexaltation of supreme horror, everyone saw the end. A spark appeared on themoor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached to the heavens. Thehouse of Jermyn no longer existed.The reason why Arthur Jermyns charred fragments were not collected andburied lies in what was found afterward, principally the thing in the box. Thestuffed goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it wasclearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than anyrecorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankindquite shockingly so. Detaileddescription would be rather unpleasant, but two salient particulars must betold, for they fit in revoltingly with certain notes of Sir Wade JermynsAfrican expeditions and with the Congolese legends of the white god and theape-princess. The two particulars in question are these: the arms on the goldenlocket about the creatures neck were the Jermyn arms, and the jocose suggestionof M. Verhaeren about certain resemblance as connected with the shrivelled faceapplied with vivid, ghastly, and unnatural horror to none other than thesensitive Arthur Jermyn, great-great-great-grandson of Sir Wade Jermyn and anunknown wife. Members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burned the thingand threw the locket into a well, and some of them do not admit that ArthurJermyn ever existed.

Previous Authors：Ex Oblivione Next Authors：From Beyond