Richard Upton Pickman's Studio Found in Boston?

"Mystery Skulls" discovered in Boston basement. It's not the North End where Pickman's secret studio apartment is supposed to be, but Thurber said he couldn't find the place again if he tried.

Regnum Congo and the Horror of Theodor de Bry's Engravings

Exhibit EXH002: Pigafetta's A Report of the Kingdom of Congo (1881 [1591]).
In collaboration with Miskatonic University's Orne Library, Special Collections

One of the most infamous books referenced in the works of H. P. Lovecraft is Regnum Congo, the centerpiece of "The Picture in the House." Lovecraft did not read this book, written in 1591 by Filippo Pigafetta, titled in English, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, and the Surrounding Countries, Drawn Out of the Writings and Discourses of the Portuguese, Duarte Lopez. Instead, he read Thomas Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, a page from which is reproduced above. But we can read a copy of Pigafetta's work. In it he does describe the Anziques as being cannibals. He does not find this that unusual in a global scale, but Pigafetta holds the Anziques to be unique in that they willingly cannibalize members of their own community. From Chapter 5

They have shambles for human flesh, as we have of animals, even eating the enemies they have killed in battle, and selling their slaves if they can get a good price for them; if not, they give them to the butcher, who cuts them in pieces, and then sells them to be roasted or boiled. It is a remarkable fact in the history of this people, that any who are tired of life, or wish to prove themselves brave and courageous, esteem it great honour to expose themselves to death by an act which shall show their contempt for life. Thus they offer themselves for slaughter, and as the faithful vassals of princes, wishing to do them service, not only give themselves to be eaten, but their slaves also, when fattened, are killed and eaten. It is true many nations eat human flesh, as in the East Indies, Brazil, and elsewhere, but to devour the flesh of their own enemies, friends, subjects, and even relations, is a thing without example, except amongst the Anzichi tribes.

Today, the people referred to as Anziques are the BaTeke, living in the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon. They are part of the Bantu language family. And as is usually the case with cannibalism stories, they came to European chroniclers from unfriendly neighbors, making the veracity of such claims doubtful without additional evidence.

But this did not stop the reproduction of the stories, and especially the image for centuries. Engraver Theodor de Bry created the image which so impressed Huxley, and in turn inspired Lovecraft's tale of backwoods New England cannibalism. Illustrations by de Bry have become some of the most reproduced in portrayals of European exploration in the 16th century. He worked with reports from various travelers and chroniclers, such as John White (check out this section of Virtual Jamestown for comparisons, commentary, and more) but did not actually journey to Africa or the Americas himself. Nonetheless, his fascinating and at times disturbing imagery shows up again and again in both popular and scholarly presentations. His studies of the native of Virginia are very commonly used, and can be viewed at several online galleries, such as this one from the University of North Carolina Libraries.

Theodor de Bry also illustrated an edition of Bartolome de las Casas' A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, an influential polemic against Spanish cruelties in the American colonies. These images are amongst the most horrifying de Bry ever produced, which is saying something, putting the centerpiece of "The Picture in the House" to shame. The book and the engravings were instrumental in establishing The Black Legend against the Spaniards, which portrayed them as monsters sacking the New World through mass torture and murder. There was indeed plenty of cruelty and destruction, but it is worth noting that the propagandistic emphasis on horrible Spanish excesses served political purposes in the national and religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, and even up through the Spanish Civil War to the present. The nations pointing out Spanish atrocities would have their own massacres and ethnic cleansing in colonies in North America.

I myself had an experience which calls to mind "The Picture in the House." Prior to my work with the archaeology of the Spanish Conquest, I was conducting prehistoric archaeological excavation in El Salvador. I had brought with me, amongst a handful of other books, a copy of Charles Hudson's Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms, which featured some of the de Bry illustrations from las Casas. This engraving in particular horrified me.


Cannibalism was also depicted, but for some reason the bits of people, and especially the anguished flailing of the maimed, bothered me at a core level. I knew that the taking of noses and ears was a common punishment for rebellion in feudal Europe, and that added to the reality of the horror depicted. For the remainder of my stay during that project, a period of several months, this image gnawed at me. I tried to avoid it while finishing the book, yet every so often felt compelled to seek it out, as if confronting the image would take away some of the fear that had gripped me. Only once out of El Salvador, and the claustrophobic apartment I lived in, and with many other books and other media, did the image's effect dissipate. Today it does not bother me in any undue fashion. But at the time, during a time period when there was great uncertainty in my life, and I felt somewhat trapped in situations not of my making both in a foreign land and in my larger life, de Bry's imagery chilled me to the core.

Cannibalism in earliest Britain - The Real "Rats in the Walls?"

Cheddar Gorge at the turn of the 20th century
Image LC-DIG-ppmsc-08150 from the United States Library of Congress (Wikicommons)

Exhibit EXH001: The Gough's and Kent's Cave Bones


Recent study of disparate bits of hitherto unrelated knowledge have suggested some deep roots for the repellent behavior of the Delapores of Exham Priory, as chronicled in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls."

Anthropological testing of bones from Gough's Cave, in Cheddar Gorge, United Kingdom, have revealed some startling information about some of the earliest settlers of Britain after the glaciers started to recede. As reported in The Guardian, a battery of new tests and procedures suggest that immediately after a rapid warming in temperatures 14,700 years ago, Gough's Cave was inhabited by humans. The precision of dating the settlement derives from a new method for filtering carbon samples for radiometric dating, one primarily suited for bones as it isolates collagen.

Some of these humans were butchered intensively, stone tools used in a manner identical to the techniques used to butcher animals, and dumped in a pit. While the numbers are small and do not suggest a large-scale practice, and there is no evidence of violent death, the intensive processing methods are striking.

"They were stripping off all of the muscle mass. Brains seemed to have been removed. Tongues seemed to have been removed. And it is also possible that eyes were being removed. It was very systematic work"

It should be noted that this processing is not a guarantee of cannibalism, as the evidence only speaks to the intensive removal of flesh and marrow in a manner equivalent to animals assumed to be used for food.

Map of sites mentioned in the text. In addition, three other locations are noted. S. T. Joshi (1997) suggests that Alchester may have inspired Anchester, the general area of Exham Priory, while Hexham Priory in the north may have inspired the name of the place itself. Piltdown is referenced in the story in relation to the hominid remains found under the Priory.

It is notable that Cheddar Gorge is not very far from some other points of interest in regards to "The Rats in the Walls." Roman history is part of the de la Poer heritage, and while he made an error in the number of the legion stationed there, Lovecraft was clearly inspired by the Roman camp at Isca Silurum in Wales, a site that fascinated him. In 1923, the year "Rats" was written, Lovecraft had read about the place and fantasized of it, as demonstrated in a letter in May of that year to Frank Belknap Long (HPL letter to Frank Belknap Long, May 13, 1923, Published in Lovecraft 1965: 228) (he would write of it in a similar manner in other letters through the years). The inspiration by Isca Silurum with the invocation of the Cymric (Welsh) language suggests that the general area near the Wales/England boundary isn't a bad place to place Exham Priory.

Just to the south of Cheddar Gorge, another interesting piece of the Exham Priory puzzle can be found at Glastonbury. Though I am not aware of any evidence that Lovecraft was familiar with it, in 1919 Frederick Bligh Bond published The Gate of Remembrance (intriguingly, the New York Times did not get around reviewing it until January 1923, the same year Lovecraft wrote "Rats")(New York Times, January 14, 1923). In it, Bond discusses his employment of a psychic researcher in his excavations of Glastonbury Abbey a decade prior, similar to the presence of Thornton, a psychic investigator, in Delapore's party of explorers under Exham Priory. This revelation led swiftly to Bond's dismissal from Glastonbury, though I suppose this is not as harsh a fate as the committal to a mental institute suffered by Thornton.

Returning to Gough's Cave, the descendants of these early settlers would have not survived directly to the present, in Britain at least. Climate grew colder again with the onset of the Younger Dryas, sending the North Atlantic back into a glaciation for about a thousand years, before warmer and more familiar temperatures became the norm after 11,500 years ago. Britain was settled again, and once again the spectre of cannibalism would raise its head. In 1866, a human arm bone was excavated at Kent's Cave, Devon, amongst thousands of animal bones. Re-analysis of this bone in 2009 (as reported by the BBC) showed cut marks not unlike those from Gough's Cave. That said, cannibalism is a flashy topic, and taking a look at some of the promotional material from the Cheddar Gorge museum might give us pause before jumping to conclusions.

Similar sensationalism has been invoked in historical discussion of another tale of British cannibalism, this one much more recent, the infamous case of Sawney Bean. Like the de la Poers in "The Rats in the Walls," the Bean clan supposedly lived in a cave (since the nineteenth century associated with Bennane Cave) and ate hundreds or thousands of victims, leaving behind a vast subterranean bone bed. In both cases, this reign of terror came to an end during the reign of King James I, a monarch so obsessed with witchcraft that he became personally involved in witch hunts and wrote Daemonologie, a manual for hunters. The reality of the Bean legend is not entirely clear, and it has been suggested it may have been nothing more than a print media hoax of the eighteenth century (read original text here) based on earlier tales.

Such tales are alive and well today, though more often associated with paranormal folklore and tourism. Nicholas Redfern in his "gonzo" Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men includes relict (or time traveling) cave men and savages amongst the various terrors encountered or alleged during his journey up and down Britain in search of the strange. More than one reviewer has suggested (with a mix of praise and disdain) Redfern and his traveling companions resemble a punk version of Lovecraft's seekers of "strange horrors," and indeed the book plays with a mythology of (somewhat New Age-tinged) extradimensional old ones who can be found in forgotten places by those who disturb what should be left alone. Likewise, the tale of Sawney Bean appears to be a staple of the Edinburgh paranormal tourism industry (a development not approved by all).

Works cited above

Bond, Frederick Bligh (script by John Alleyne)
1921 The Gate of Remembrance: The Story of the Psychological Experiment which Resulted in the Discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury. Fourth Edition. E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. Source Google Books.

King James the First (edited by G. B. Harrison)
1922 - 1926 Daemonologie [1597] and Newes from Scotland [1591] From the series Bodley Head Quartos published by John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd. Source Sacred Texts

Joshi, S. T. (ed.)
1997 The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, annotated by S. T. Joshi. Dell, New York.

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips
1965 Selected Letters: 1911 – 1924. Volume I. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin.

Redfern, Nick
2004 Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men. Paraview Pocket Books. New York.