Walter de la Mare, sketched by Edgar Spence, 1935.

The Pictures in Mr. Kempe's House

commentary on H. P. Lovecraft & Walter de la Mare
by Jim Rockhill

   

A man traveling through a region unfamiliar to him comes upon a house inhabited by an eccentric in antique dress whose obsession leads him to take the lives of his visitors. Anyone guessing that this describes H.P. Lovecraft's tale "The Picture in the House," penned in December 1920, published shortly thereafter by the amateur press & first published professionally in the January 1924 issue of Weird Tales, is correct. Equally correct is anyone who may have guessed that this describes Walter de la Mare's tale "Mr. Kempe," which first appeared in the November 1925 issue of both The London Mercury and Harper's Magazine. Although Lovecraft praises "Mr. Kempe" in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," it is as clear that de la Mare's tale could not have influenced Lovecraft's as it is doubtful that Lovecraft's could have influenced de la Mare's. Yet there are many striking parallels & just as many striking differences between the two works.

Lovecraft's protagonist, "inquest of certain genealogical data," happens upon a "time-battered edifice" while attempting a short cut on an abandoned road. Inclement weather then forces him to seek reluctant shelter within the building.

De la Mare's schoolmaster manages to misread his map while on a walking tour & finds out about Mr. Kempe's abode while trying to correct his route. Even though the woman giving him directions hints that all might not be well with Mr. Kempe, acting "almost as if she believed Mr. Kempe had discovered little methods of his own against the onsets of mortality," the teacher decides to make a short trip to visit the "old, ancient building" before continuing on his way. This proves to be more remote than he had reckoned, & he realizes at one point that he has no choice but to proceed along the cliff path leading to it if he is not to risk falling to his death by trying to return or being torn from the cliff-face if he tarries. He soon realizes that he fears more than the physical threat posed by the elements:

"What terrified me beyond words to express was some positive presence here in a more desperate condition even than I. I was being waylaid."

After removing himself from physical peril, this feeling becomes even more acute:

" . . . the odd conviction persisted, that though safe, I was not yet secure. It was as if I were still facing some peril of the mind and, . . .from some point in all this vacancy around me a steady devouring gaze was fixed on me - that I was being watched."

Lovecraft's protagonist is also conscious of being watched, though he has the dubious consolation of being able to identify his watcher :

"Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly & hauntingly . . ."

While it cannot boast a well predating the 9th Century, as can Mr. Kempe's sanctum, this Yankee structure is full of antiques, all predating the Revolution of 1776. Both buildings show obvious signs of decay. The Yankee structure smells of death, but it is Mr. Kempe's building which has its own graveyard. Christian symbols in or around both buildings are neglected or of doubtful efficacy, from the grotesquely illustrated Pilgrim's Progress, 18th Century Bible & "rotting bulk of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana" in the Yankee dwelling to the "stunted cross, with one of its arms broken away" to the east of Mr. Kempe's. Both structures & their surroundings have, as de la Mare writes, their "sinister aspect. No place surely for when the slow dark hours begin." To Lovecraft, "sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream."

The inhabitants of both houses are driven by hunger. The Yankee describes how much his enjoyment of slaughtering sheep increased after seeing the depiction of a cannibal's butcher shop in Pigafetta's Regnum Congo, then becomes increasingly explicit about his hankering for "victuals I couldn't raise nor buy." Mr. Kempe seems neither to eat nor drink. When asked for a glass of water, he pauses as if the request makes no sense to him. Yet, the narrator has "never seen a human countenance that betrayed so desperate a hunger. But for what? It was impossible to tell." He lacks the hearty physicality of the Yankee, his first appearance prompting a comparison with Banquo's ghost in Macbeth, but, as is confirmed when he & the schoolmaster butt heads trying to retrieve the photographs, he is physically present. It is his obsessions, his need for "proofs" & "evidences," which are entirely spiritual. His plea to the schoolmaster:

"You must not think of leaving the house tonight. I need company; I need it,"

is just as frightening an expression of hunger as the Yankee's.

Lovecraft writes that the Yankee's forebears were "seized with a gloomy & fanatical belief," but if both men are morbidly fanatical in their pursuits, the ruddy bearded, gluttonous Yankee displays no melancholy traits. He is "stout," "powerful" & displays "an aboundingly good humour." Reflecting upon his gleeful demeanor & his eating habits, one might even call him sanguine. It is the gaunt, ascetic, rusty booted Mr. Kempe who displays "that terrifying doglike despair," hovering over his dying wife, photographing her wasting body for proof of the soul, ever willing to wrest further evidence from whatever source might present itself & weeping bitterly at the schoolmaster's escape.

De la Mare's schoolmaster can count himself fortunate to have run into Mr. Kempe instead of the Yankee, for the latter has a decided taste for those in his profession. His escape by forcing open a rotting window & falling into a compost heap is also less traumatic, if less dignified, than that of Lovecraft's genealogist. The latter, beginning to realize his host's cannibalistic intentions, suddenly sees "on the loose plaster of the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed to spread even as I watched it." Rather than "the scarlet blot" taking on "the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts" to herald the flight of Tess of the D'Urbervilles; however, our hero, the house & the Pigafettophile are alike blasted into oblivion by "a titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts." One must assume, reading his account of what happened, that the narrator's oblivion was of a shorter duration than his host's & that the latter's domicile dreams no more.

The climax in both tales hinges on the characters' reactions to pictures. "Queer how picters kin set a body thinkin'," spoken by Lovecraft's Yankee could be echoed, if perhaps more elegantly, by the genealogist, Mr. Kempe & the schoolmaster. Lovecraft's Yankee finds all of the illustrations in the Regnum Congo fascinating, but chooses the cannibal's butcher shop depicted in Plate XII to emulate, thus unnaturally prolonging his life. The genealogist fails to grasp the conclusion that his host has graduated from theory to practice until the last possible moment. Without resorting to a literal bolt from heaven, revelation of Mr. Kempe's activities finds the schoolmaster not through the full implications of one picture, but through his glimpse of another set of pictures, hitherto unknown to him:

"I drew back appalled - their details fixed in my mind as if etched there by a flash of lightning."

Since the subjects of these photographs are moribund at best, & neither of those listening to his tale is apparently named Eliot, the schoolmaster is in no position to protest that any of these pictures is "a photograph from life."

   

References

• Walter de la Mare Short Stories 1895-1926. (Giles de la Mare, 1996), pp. 215-246.
• Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891. Signet Classics, 1964), p. 403.
• H.P. Lovecraft The Dunwhich Horror & Others (Arkham House, 1963. Corrected 6th Edition, 1984), pp. 116-124.

   

Copyright © 2001 by Jim Rockhill, all rights reserved

   

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