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Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family by H.P. Lovecraft
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
by H.P. Lovecraft
Written 1920
Published March 1921 in The Wolverine, No. 9, p. 3-11.
I
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer
daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the
ultimate exterminator of our human speciesùif separate species we beùfor its
reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed
upon 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 had
been; for certain papers and a certain boxed object were found which made men
wish 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 boxed
object which had come from Africa. It was this object, and not his peculiar
personal appearance, which made him end his life. Many would have disliked to
live if possessed of the peculiar features of Arthur Jermyn, but he had been a
poet and scholar and had not minded. Learning was in his blood, for his
great-grandfather, Sir Robert Jermyn, Bt., had been an anthropologist of note,
whilst his great-great-great-grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn, was one of the
earliest explorers of the Congo region, and had written eruditely of its tribes,
animals, and supposed antiquities. Indeed, old Sir Wade had possessed an
intellectual zeal amounting almost to a mania; his bizarre conjectures on a
prehistoric white Congolese civilisation earning him much ridicule when his
book, Observation on the Several Parts of Africa, was published. In 1765 this
fearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at Huntingdon.
Madness was in all the Jermyns, and people were glad there were not many of
them. The line put forth no branches, and Arthur was the last of it. If he had
not been, one can not say what he would have done when the object came. The
Jermyns never seemed to look quite rightùsomething was amiss, though Arthur was
the worst, and the old family portraits in Jermyn House showed fine faces enough
before Sir WadeÆs time. Certainly, the madness began with Sir Wade, whose wild
stories of Africa were at once the delight and terror of his few friends. It
showed in his collection of trophies and specimens, which were not such as a
normal man would accumulate and preserve, and appeared strikingly in the
Oriental seclusion in which he kept his wife. The latter, he had said, was the
daughter of a Portuguese trader whom he had met in Africa; and did not like
English ways. She, with an infant son born in Africa, had accompanied him back
from the second and longest of his trips, and had gone with him on the third and
last, 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 at
Jermyn 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 when
he returned to Africa he would permit no one to care for his young son save a
loathsome black woman from Guinea. Upon coming back, after the death of Lady
Jermyn, he himself assumed complete care of the boy.
But it was the talk of Sir Wade, especially when in his cups, which chiefly led
his friends to deem him mad. In a rational age like the eighteenth century it
was unwise for a man of learning to talk about wild sights and strange scenes
under a Congo moon; of the gigantic walls and pillars of a forgotten city,
crumbling and vine-grown, and of damp, silent, stone steps leading interminably
down into the darkness of abysmal treasure-vaults and inconceivable catacombs.
Especially was it unwise to rave of the living things that might haunt such a
place; of creatures half of the jungle and half of the impiously aged
cityùfabulous creatures which even a Pliny might describe with scepticism;
things that might have sprung up after the great apes had overrun the dying city
with the walls and the pillars, the vaults and the weird carvings. Yet after he
came home for the last time Sir Wade would speak of such matters with a
shudderingly uncanny zest, mostly after his third glass at the KnightÆs Head;
boasting of what he had found in the jungle and of how he had dwelt among
terrible ruins known only to him. And finally he had spoken of the living things
in such a manner that he was taken to the madhouse. He had shown little regret
when shut into the barred room at Huntingdon, for his mind moved curiously. Ever
since his son had commenced to grow out of infancy, he had liked his home less
and less, till at last he had seemed to dread it. The KnightÆs Head had been his
headquarters, and when he was confined he expressed some vague gratitude as if
for protection. Three years later he died.
Wade JermynÆs son Philip was a highly peculiar person. Despite a strong physical
resemblance to his father, his appearance and conduct were in many particulars
so coarse that he was universally shunned. Though he did not inherit the madness
which was feared by some, he was densely stupid and given to brief periods of
uncontrollable violence. In frame he was small, but intensely powerful, and was
of incredible agility. Twelve years after succeeding to his title he married the
daughter of his gamekeeper, a person said to be of gypsy extraction, but before
his son was born joined the navy as a common sailor, completing the general
disgust which his habits and misalliance had begun. After the close of the
American war he was heard of as sailor on a merchantman in the African 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 a
strange and fatal turn. Tall and fairly handsome, with a sort of weird Eastern
grace despite certain slight oddities of proportion, Robert Jermyn began life as
a scholar and investigator. It was he who first studied scientifically the vast
collection of relics which his mad grandfather had brought from Africa, and who
made the family name as celebrated in ethnology as in exploration. In 1815 Sir
Robert married a daughter of the seventh Viscount Brightholme and was
subsequently blessed with three children, the eldest and youngest of whom were
never publicly seen on account of deformities in mind and body. Saddened by
these family misfortunes, the scientist sought relief in work, and made two long
expeditions in the interior of Africa. In 1849 his second son, Nevil, a
singularly repellent person who seemed to combine the surliness of Philip Jermyn
with the hauteur of the Brightholmes, ran away with a vulgar dancer, but was
pardoned upon his return in the following year. He came back to Jermyn House a
widower with an infant son, Alfred, who was one day to be the father of Arthur
Jermyn.
Friends said that it was this series of griefs which unhinged the mind of Sir
Robert Jermyn, yet it was probably merely a bit of African folklore which caused
the disaster. The elderly scholar had been collecting legends of the Onga tribes
near the field of his grandfatherÆs and his own explorations, hoping in some way
to account for Sir WadeÆs wild tales of a lost city peopled by strange hybrid
creatures. A certain consistency in the strange papers of his ancestor suggested
that the madmanÆs imagination might have been stimulated by native myths. On
October 19, 1852, the explorer Samuel Seaton called at Jermyn House with a
manuscript of notes collected among the Ongas, believing that certain legends of
a gray city of white apes ruled by a white god might prove valuable to the
ethnologist. In his conversation he probably supplied many additional details;
the nature of which will never be known, since a hideous series of tragedies
suddenly burst into being. When Sir Robert Jermyn emerged from his library he
left behind the strangled corpse of the explorer, and before he could be
restrained, had put an end to all three of his children; the two who were never
seen, and the son who had run away. Nevil Jermyn died in the successful defence
of his own two-year-old son, who had apparently been included in the old manÆs
madly murderous scheme. Sir Robert himself, after repeated attempts at suicide
and a stubborn refusal to utter an articulate sound, died of apoplexy in the
second year of his confinement.
Sir Alfred Jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday, but his tastes never
matched his title. At twenty he had joined a band of music-hall performers, and
at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant
American circus. His end was very revolting. Among the animals in the exhibition
with which he travelled was a huge bull gorilla of lighter colour than the
average; a surprisingly tractable beast of much popularity with the performers.
With this gorilla Alfred Jermyn was singularly fascinated, and on many occasions
the two would eye each other for long periods through the intervening bars.
Eventually Jermyn asked and obtained permission to train the animal,,
astonishing audiences and fellow performers alike with his success. One morning
in Chicago, as the gorilla and Alfred Jermyn were rehearsing an exceedingly
clever boxing match, the former delivered a blow of more than the usual force,
hurting both the body and the dignity of the amateur trainer. Of what followed,
members of ôThe Greatest Show On Earthö do not like to speak. They did not
expect to hear Sir Alfred Jermyn emit a shrill, inhuman scream, or to see him
seize his clumsy antagonist with both hands, dash it to the floor of the cage,
and bite fiendishly at its hairy throat. The gorilla was off its guard, but not
for long, and before anything could be done by the regular trainer, the body
which had belonged to a baronet was past recognition.
II
Arthur Jermyn was the son of Sir Alfred Jermyn and a music-hall singer of
unknown origin. When the husband and father deserted his family, the mother took
the child to Jermyn House; where there was none left to object to her presence.
She was not without notions of what a noblemanÆs dignity should be, and saw to
it that her son received the best education which limited money could provide.
The family resources were now sadly slender, and Jermyn House had fallen into
woeful 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 andÆ a
dreamer. Some of the neighbouring families who had heard tales of old Sir Wade
JermynÆs unseen Portuguese wife declared that her Latin blood must be showing
itself; but most persons merely sneered at his sensitiveness to beauty,
attributing it to his music-hall mother, who was socially unrecognised. The
poetic delicacy of Arthur Jermyn was the more remarkable because of his uncouth
personal appearance. Most of the Jermyns had possessed a subtly odd and
repellent cast, but ArthurÆs case was very striking. It is hard to say just what
he resembled, but his expression, his facial angle, and the length of his arms
gave 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 to
redeem the intellectual fame of his family. Though of poetic rather than
scientific temperament, he planned to continue the work of his forefathers in
African ethnology and antiquities, utilising the truly wonderful though strange
collection of Sir Wade. With his fanciful mind he thought often of the
prehistoric civilisation in which the mad explorer had so implicitly believed,
and would weave tale after tale about the silent jungle city mentioned in the
latterÆs wilder notes and paragraphs. For the nebulous utterances concerning a
nameless, unsuspected race of jungle hybrids he had a peculiar feeling of
mingled terror and attraction, speculating on the possible basis of such a
fancy, and seeking to obtain light among the more recent data gleaned by his
great-grandfather and Samuel Seaton amongst the Ongas.
In 1911, after the death of his mother, Sir Arthur Jermyn determined to pursue
his investigations to the utmost extent. Selling a portion of his estate to
obtain the requisite money, he outfitted an expedition and sailed for the Congo.
Arranging with the Belgian authorities for a party of guides, he spent a year in
the Onga and Kahn country, finding data beyond the highest of his expectations.
Among the Kaliris was an aged chief called Mwanu, who possessed not only a
highly retentive memory, but a singular degree of intelligence and interest in
old legends. This ancient confirmed every tale which Jermyn had heard, adding
his own account of the stone city and the white apes as it had been told to him.

According to Mwanu, the gray city and the hybrid creatures were no more, having
been annihilated by the warlike NÆbangus many years ago. This tribe, after
destroying most of the edifices and killing the live beings, had carried off the
stuffed goddess which had been the object of their quest; the white ape-goddess
which the strange beings worshipped, and which was held by Congo tradition to be
the form of one who had reigned as a princess among these beings. Just what the
white apelike creatures could have been, Mwanu had no idea, but he thought they
were the builders of the ruined city. Jermyn could form no conjecture, but by
close questioning obtained a very picturesque legend of the s.tuffed goddess.
The ape-princess, it was said, became the consort of a great white god who had
come out of the West. For a long time they had reigned over the city together,
but when they had a son, all three went away. Later the god and princess had
returned, and upon the death of the princess her divine husband had mummified
the body and enshrined it in a vast house of stone, where it was worshipped.
Then he departed alone. The legend here seemed to present three variants.
According to one story, nothing further happened save that the stuffed goddess
became a symbol of supremacy for whatever tribe might possess it. It was for
this reason that the NÆbangus carried it off. A second story told of a godÆs
return and death at the feet of his enshrined wife. A third told of the return
of the son, grown to manhoodùor apehood or godhood, as the case might beùyet
unconscious of his identity. Surely the imaginative blacks had made the most of
whatever events might lie behind the extravagant legendry.
Of the reality of the jungle city described by old Sir Wade, Arthur Jermyn had
no further doubt; and was hardly astonished when early in 1912 he came upon what
was left of it. Its size must have been exaggerated, yet the stones lying about
proved that it was no mere Negro village. Unfortunately no carvings could be
found, and the small size of the expedition prevented operations toward clearing
the one visible passageway that seemed to lead down into the system of vaults
which Sir Wade had mentioned. The white apes and the stuffed goddess were
discussed with all the native chiefs of the region, but it remained for a
European to improve on the data offered by old Mwanu. M. Verhaeren, Belgian
agent at a trading-post on the
Congo, believed that he could not only locate but obtain the stuffed goddess, of
which he had vaguely heard; since the once mighty NÆbangus were now the
submissive servants of King AlbertÆs government, and with but little persuasion
could be induced to part with the gruesome deity they had carried off. When
Jermyn sailed for England, therefore, it was with the exultant probability that
he would within a few months receive a priceless ethnological relic confirming
the wildest of his great-great-great-grandfatherÆs narrativesùthat is, the
wildest which he had ever heard. Countrymen near Jermyn House had perhaps heard
wilder tales handed down from ancestors who had listened to Sir Wade around the
tables of the KnightÆs Head.
Arthur Jermyn waited very patiently for the expected box from M. Verhaeren,
meanwhile studying with increased diligence the manuscripts left by his mad
ancestor. He began to feel closely akin to Sir Wade, and to seek relics of the
latterÆs personal life in England as well as of his African exploits. Oral
accounts of the mysterious and secluded wife had been numerous, but no tangible
relic of her stay at Jermyn House remained. Jermyn wondered what circumstance
had prompted or permitted such an effacement, and decided that the husbandÆs
insanity 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 doubt
her practical heritage and superficial knowledge of the Dark Continent had
caused her to flout Sir WadeÆs tales of the interior, a thing which such a man
would not be likely to forgive. She had died in Africa, perhaps dragged thither
by a husband determined to prove what he had told. But as Jermyn indulged in
these reflections he could not but smile at their futility, a century and a half
after the death of both his strange progenitors.
In June, 1913, a letter arrived from M. Verhaeren, telling of the finding of the
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 human or
simian only a scientist could determine, and the process of determination would
be greatly hampered by its imperfect condition. Time and the Congo climate are
not kind to mummies; especially when their preparation is as amateurish as
seemed to be the case here. Around the creatureÆs neck æhad been found a golden
chain bearing an empty locket on which were armorial designs; no doubt some
hapless travellerÆs keepsake, taken by the NÆbangus and hung upon the goddess as
a charm. In commenting on the contour of the mummyÆs face, M. Verhaeren
suggested a whimsical comparison; or rather, expressed a humorous wonder just
how it would strike his corespondent, but was too much interested scientifically
to waste many words in levity. The stuffed. goddess, he wrote, would arrive duly
packed 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 the
collection of African specimens as arranged by Sir Robert and Arthur. What
ensued can best be gathered from the tales of servants and from things and
papers later examined. Of the various tales, that of aged Soames, the family
butler, is most ample and coherent. According to this trustworthy man, Sir
Arthur Jermyn dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box, though
the instant sound of hammer and chisel showed that he did not delay the
operation. Nothing was heard for some time; just how long Soames cannot exactly
estimate, but it was certainly less than a quarter of an hour later that the
horrible scream, undoubtedly in JermynÆs voice, was heard. Immediately afterward
Jermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically toward the front of the house
as if pursued by some hideous enemy. The expression on his face, a face ghastly
enough in repose, was beyond description. When near the front door he seemed to
think of something, and turned back in his flight, finally disappearing down the
stairs to the cellar. The servants were utterly dumbfounded, and watched at the
head of the stairs, but their master did not return. A smell of oil was all that
came up from the regions below. After dark a rattling was heard at the door
leading 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, steal
furtively out and vanish on the black moor surrounding the house. Then, in an
exaltation of supreme horror, everyone saw the end. A spark appeared on the
moor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached to the heavens. The
house of Jermyn no longer existed.
The reason why Arthur JermynÆs charred fragments were not collected and buried
lies in what was found afterward, principally the thing in the box. The stuffed
goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it was clearly a
mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded
variety, and infinitely nearer mankindùquite shockingly so. Detailed description
would be rather unpleasant, but two salient particulars must be told, for they
fit in revoltingly with certain notes of Sir Wade JermynÆs African expeditions
and with the Congolese legends of the white god and the ape-princess. The two
particulars in question are these: the arms on the golden locket about the
creatureÆs neck were the Jermyn arms, and the jocose suggestion of M. Verhaeren
about certain resemblance as connected with the shrivelled face applied with
vivid, ghastly, and unnatural horror to none other than the sensitive Arthur
Jermyn, great-great-great-grandson of Sir Wade Jermyn and an unknown wife.
Members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burned the thing and threw the
locket into a well, and some of them do not admit that Arthur Jermyn ever
existed.




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Last modified: 12/18/1999 18:42:38