Some folks
don’t realize that H.P. Lovecraft did a lot more than write
about
big, tentacley evil from beyond time.
He was an amateur scientist, wrote essays about the literary and
psychological nature of horror, and also did some work as a ghost writer (where
he did all the work and someone else got to put their name on it).
Perhaps his
best-known ghostwriting client was a stage magician and escape artist named
Erik Weisz who could also probably be credited with creating the art of
self-promotion. Most of you probably
know Weisz by his far-more-popular stage name—Harry Houdini. Houdini routinely escaped from handcuffs,
manacles, strait jackets, prison cells, locked safes, and more. He was also a movie star, a fervent
anti-spiritualist who debunked supernatural claims between stage shows, and the
author of numerous books, stories, and articles about his personal exploits and
the art of magic.
Well... the
author of some of them.
In early 1924, Lovecraft got offered a writing
assignment from his publisher at Weird Tales. Houdini had scribbled down notes about an
amazing adventure he’d (supposedly) had while touring in Egypt and was looking
for someone to write them up as an actual story for his millions of fans. Lovecraft looked at the notes, declared the
whole thing to be a complete fantasy, and asked if he’d have carte blanche
to embellish the story as he saw fit.
The publisher said sure and Lovecraft went off to write “Under The
Pyramids,” which appeared in the June-July issue of Weird Tales
magazine as “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs” with Houdini’s name on the
byline. The escape artist was so pleased
with the story he offered Lovecraft several more writing assignments over the next
two years (until Houdini’s death in 1926).
It was more than ten years before H.P. finally got proper credit for
the story.
So, now
that you have some background... here are some highlights from “Imprisoned With
the Pharaohs” for your enjoyment.
Also, a
huge thanks to Peter C. (the other, original Peter C., as it were) who managed
to score a bunch of minifigs I needed to pull this off. When you see the really impressive shot in a few days, it’s
all thanks to him.
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Mystery
attracts mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as a performer of unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives and events which my
calling has led people to link with my interests and activities. Some of these
have been trivial and irrelevant, some deeply dramatic and absorbing, some
productive of weird and perilous experiences, and some involving me in
extensive scientific and historical research. Many of these matters I have told
and shall continue to tell freely; but there is one of which I speak with great
reluctance, and which I am now relating only after a session of grilling
persuasion from the publishers of this magazine, who had heard vague rumours of
it from other members of my family.
The hitherto guarded subject
pertains to my non-professional visit to Egypt fourteen years ago, and has been
avoided by me for several reasons. For one thing, I am averse to exploiting
certain unmistakably actual facts and conditions obviously unknown to the
myriad tourists who throng about the pyramids and apparently secreted with much
diligence by the authorities at Cairo, who cannot be wholly ignorant of them.
For another thing, I dislike to recount an incident in which my own fantastic
imagination must have played so great a part. What I saw—or thought I
saw—certainly did not take place; but is rather to be viewed as a result of my
then recent readings in Egyptology, and of the speculations anent this theme
which my environment naturally prompted. These imaginative stimuli, magnified
by the excitement of an actual event terrible enough in itself, undoubtedly
gave rise to the culminating horror of that grotesque night so long past.
In January, 1910, I had finished
a professional engagement in England and signed a contract for a tour of
Australian theatres. A liberal time being allowed for the trip, I determined to
make the most of it in the sort of travel which chiefly interests me; so
accompanied by my wife I drifted pleasantly down the Continent and embarked at
Marseilles on the P. & O. Steamer
Malwa, bound for Port
Said. From that point I proposed to visit the principal historical localities
of lower Egypt before leaving finally for Australia.
============
But once more disappointment
awaited us, for all that we beheld was European save the costumes and the
crowds. A prosaic subway led to a square teeming with carriages, taxicabs, and
trolley-cars, and gorgeous with electric lights shining on tall buildings;
whilst the very theatre where I was vainly requested to play, and which I later
attended as a spectator, had recently been renamed the “American Cosmograph”.
We stopped at Shepherd’s Hotel, reached in a taxi that sped along broad,
smartly built-up streets; and amidst the perfect service of its restaurant,
elevators, and generally Anglo-American luxuries the mysterious East and
immemorial past seemed very far away.
The next day, however,
precipitated us delightfully into the heart of the Arabian Nights atmosphere;
and in the winding ways and exotic skyline of Cairo, the Bagdad of
Haroun-al-Raschid seemed to live again. Guided by our Baedeker, we had struck
east past the Ezbekiyeh Gardens along the Mouski in quest of the native
quarter, and were soon in the hands of a clamorous cicerone who—notwithstanding
later developments—was assuredly a master at his trade. Not until afterward did
I see that I should have applied at the hotel for a licenced guide. This man, a
shaven, peculiarly hollow-voiced, and relatively cleanly fellow who looked like
a Pharaoh and called himself “Abdul Reis el Drogman”, appeared to have much
power over others of his kind; though subsequently the police professed not to
know him, and to suggest that reis is merely a name for any person in
authority, whilst “Drogman” is obviously no more than a clumsy modification of
the word for a leader of tourist parties—dragoman.
Abdul led us among such wonders
as we had before only read and dreamed of. Old Cairo is itself a story-book and
a dream—labyrinths of narrow alleys redolent of aromatic secrets; Arabesque
balconies and oriels nearly meeting above the cobbled streets; maelstroms of
Oriental traffic with strange cries, cracking whips, rattling carts, jingling
money, and braying donkeys; kaleidoscopes of polychrome robes, veils, turbans,
and tarbushes; water-carriers and dervishes, dogs and cats, soothsayers and
barbers; and over all the whining of blind beggars crouched in alcoves, and the
sonorous chanting of muezzins from minarets limned delicately against a sky of
deep, unchanging blue.
The roofed, quieter bazaars were
hardly less alluring. Spice, perfume, incense, beads, rugs, silks, and
brass—old Mahmoud Suleiman squats cross-legged amidst his gummy bottles while
chattering youths pulverise mustard in the hollowed-out capital of an ancient
classic column—a Roman Corinthian, perhaps from neighbouring Heliopolis, where
Augustus stationed one of his three Egyptian legions. Antiquity begins to
mingle with exoticism. And then the mosques and the museum—we saw them all, and
tried not to let our Arabian revel succumb to the darker charm of Pharaonic
Egypt which the museum’s priceless treasures offered. That was to be our
climax, and for the present we concentrated on the mediaeval Saracenic glories
of the Caliphs whose magnificent tomb-mosques form a glittering faery
necropolis on the edge of the Arabian Desert.
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