"Old Bugs" by H. P. Lovecraft is a short story that stands out among the author's oeuvre as a rare example of humor and self-parody. Written in 1919, but not published until 1959 by Arkham House, the story is a satirical account of the downfall of a former scholar and poet who succumbs to alcoholism and drug addiction. The story is also a thinly veiled warning to Lovecraft's friend Alfred Galpin, who had expressed a desire to try alcohol before the onset of Prohibition. Lovecraft, a staunch teetotaler, wrote the story as a way of dissuading Galpin from indulging in such vices, and even included a photograph of Galpin's former fiancée Eleanor Wing as a symbol of his lost love and potential.
The story is narrated by an unnamed patron of Sheehan's Pool Room, a sordid establishment in Chicago's stockyard district, where illicit liquor and narcotics are readily available. The narrator describes the pitiful figure of Old Bugs, a ragged and filthy attendant who performs menial tasks in exchange for whiskey and hasheesh. Old Bugs is shunned and ridiculed by the other customers, who are unaware of his past as a brilliant scholar and poet. The narrator, however, has befriended Old Bugs and learned his tragic history through his occasional bursts of eloquence and erudition when intoxicated.
Old Bugs, whose real name is Alfred Trevor, was once a promising student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. He was engaged to Eleanor Wing, a beautiful and cultured young woman, and had published several poems and essays in prestigious journals. He was also an avid reader of occult literature, especially the works of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, whose infamous Necronomicon he had studied at the university library. One day, he decided to experiment with alcohol in a secluded woodland spot, hoping to enhance his poetic inspiration. However, he soon became addicted to the drink, and his life spiraled out of control. He lost his scholarship, his fiancée, his reputation, and his sanity. He wandered across the country, seeking more and more potent intoxicants, until he ended up at Sheehan's Pool Room.
The narrator expresses his sympathy and admiration for Old Bugs, whom he considers a misunderstood genius and a victim of circumstance. He also reveals that he has secretly arranged for Old Bugs to receive a copy of the Necronomicon from Miskatonic University, hoping that it will restore his interest in life and literature. However, the plan backfires when Old Bugs reads the forbidden tome and becomes convinced that he has summoned the ancient evil god Cthulhu from his slumber in the sunken city of R'lyeh. Old Bugs flees from Sheehan's Pool Room in terror, pursued by an unseen horror that only he can perceive. He is later found dead in an alley, clutching the Necronomicon and the photograph of Eleanor Wing.
"Old Bugs" is a remarkable story that showcases Lovecraft's versatility as a writer and his ability to blend horror and humor in an effective way. The story is full of references and allusions to Lovecraft's own life and works, as well as to those of his literary influences and contemporaries. For instance, the name Alfred Trevor is an anagram of Alfred Galpin's name; Miskatonic University and Arkham are recurring settings in Lovecraft's fiction; Abdul Alhazred and Cthulhu are central figures in his Cthulhu Mythos; Sheehan's Pool Room is based on an actual place that Lovecraft visited in Chicago; and Eleanor Wing was a real person who broke off her engagement with Galpin.
The story also demonstrates Lovecraft's mastery of irony and satire, as he mocks both himself and his friend through the character of Old Bugs. Lovecraft portrays Old Bugs as a parody of his own scholarly aspirations and literary ambitions, as well as those of Galpin. He exaggerates Old Bugs' erudition and eloquence to absurd levels, making him quote obscure passages from classical authors and recite pompous verses from his own poems. He also exposes Old Bugs' folly and hypocrisy in pursuing alcohol as a source of inspiration, while condemning other forms of artistic expression as decadent and degenerate. Moreover, he contrasts Old Bugs' lofty ideals with his squalid reality, highlighting the gap between his dreams and his deeds.
The story also contains elements of cosmic horror that are characteristic of Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft depicts Old Bugs' fascination with the occult as a dangerous curiosity that leads him to uncover secrets that are better left unknown. He implies that Old Bugs' addiction to alcohol and drugs is not only a physical dependency, but also a psychological escape from the horrors that lurk beyond the veil of reality. He suggests that Old Bugs' final fate is not merely a result of his own actions, but also of the intervention of dark forces that are beyond his control. He implies that Old Bugs' death is not a release from his suffering, but a transition to a worse state of existence.
"Old Bugs" is a story that deserves more attention and appreciation than it has received. It is not only a humorous and poignant tale of a fallen man, but also a clever and insightful commentary on Lovecraft's own life and works. It is a story that reveals Lovecraft's self-awareness and self-criticism, as well as his affection and concern for his friend. It is a story that illustrates Lovecraft's skill and originality as a writer, as well as his influence and legacy in the field of horror literature.
References:
- Cannon, P. (2004). H. P. Lovecraft. Twayne Publishers.
- de Camp, L. S. (1975). Lovecraft: A Biography. Doubleday.
- Derleth, A. (1959). The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces. Arkham House.
- Dziemianowicz, S. (1996). The Annotated Guide to Unknown and Unknown Worlds. Borgo Press.
- Joshi, S. T. (2004). A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time. Liverpool University Press.
- Joshi, S. T., & Schultz, D. E. (Eds.). (2001). An H.P.Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press.
- Lovecraft, H.P., (1919). Old Bugs [Short story]. In Derleth, A., & Wandrei, D., (Eds.), (1959). The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (pp. 3-12). Arkham House.
- Price, R.M., Skal, D.J., Burleson, D.R., Campbell, R.W., Simmons, D., et al., (Eds.). (2008). H.P.Lovecraft: Tales [Library of America edition]. Library of America.
- St Pierre, M.-A., (2004). “Dagon”: An Introduction to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos [Master’s thesis]. Université de Montréal.
Note: The works of H.P. Lovecraft are in the public domain.
Old Bugs
By H. P. Lovecraft
An Extemporaneous Sob Story
by Marcus Lollius, Proconsul of Gaul
Sheehan’s Pool Room, which adorns one of the lesser alleys in the heart of Chicago’s stockyard district, is not a nice place. Its air, freighted with a thousand odours such as Coleridge may have found at Cologne, too seldom knows the purifying rays of the sun; but fights for space with the acrid fumes of unnumbered cheap cigars and cigarettes which dangle from the coarse lips of unnumbered human animals that haunt the place day and night. But the popularity of Sheehan’s remains unimpaired; and for this there is a reason—a reason obvious to anyone who will take the trouble to analyse the mixed stenches prevailing there. Over and above the fumes and sickening closeness rises an aroma once familiar throughout the land, but now happily banished to the back streets of life by the edict of a benevolent government—the aroma of strong, wicked whiskey—a precious kind of forbidden fruit indeed in this year of grace 1950.
Sheehan’s is the acknowledged centre to Chicago’s subterranean traffic in liquor and narcotics, and as such has a certain dignity which extends even to the unkempt attachés of the place; but there was until lately one who lay outside the pale of that dignity—one who shared the squalor and filth, but not the importance, of Sheehan’s. He was called “Old Bugs”, and was the most disreputable object in a disreputable environment. What he had once been, many tried to guess; for his language and mode of utterance when intoxicated to a certain degree were such as to excite wonderment; but what he was, presented less difficulty—for “Old Bugs”, in superlative degree, epitomised the pathetic species known as the “bum” or the “down-and-outer”. Whence he had come, no one could tell. One night he had burst wildly into Sheehan’s, foaming at the mouth and screaming for whiskey and hasheesh; and having been supplied in exchange for a promise to perform odd jobs, had hung about ever since, mopping floors, cleaning cuspidors and glasses, and attending to an hundred similar menial duties in exchange for the drink and drugs which were necessary to keep him alive and sane.
He talked but little, and usually in the common jargon of the underworld; but occasionally, when inflamed by an unusually generous dose of crude whiskey, would burst forth into strings of incomprehensible polysyllables and snatches of sonorous prose and verse which led certain habitués to conjecture that he had seen better days. One steady patron—a bank defaulter under cover—came to converse with him quite regularly, and from the tone of his discourse ventured the opinion that he had been a writer or professor in his day. But the only tangible clue to Old Bugs’ past was a faded photograph which he constantly carried about with him—the photograph of a young woman of noble and beautiful features. This he would sometimes draw from his tattered pocket, carefully unwrap from its covering of tissue paper, and gaze upon for hours with an expression of ineffable sadness and tenderness. It was not the portrait of one whom an underworld denizen would be likely to know, but of a lady of breeding and quality, garbed in the quaint attire of thirty years before. Old Bugs himself seemed also to belong to the past, for his nondescript clothing bore every hallmark of antiquity. He was a man of immense height, probably more than six feet, though his stooping shoulders sometimes belied this fact. His hair, a dirty white and falling out in patches, was never combed; and over his lean face grew a mangy stubble of coarse beard which seemed always to remain at the bristling stage—never shaven—yet never long enough to form a respectable set of whiskers. His features had perhaps been noble once, but were now seamed with the ghastly effects of terrible dissipation. At one time—probably in middle life—he had evidently been grossly fat; but now he was horribly lean, the purple flesh hanging in loose pouches under his bleary eyes and upon his cheeks. Altogether, Old Bugs was not pleasing to look upon.
The disposition of Old Bugs was as odd as his aspect. Ordinarily he was true to the derelict type—ready to do anything for a nickel or a dose of whiskey or hasheesh—but at rare intervals he shewed the traits which earned him his name. Then he would try to straighten up, and a certain fire would creep into the sunken eyes. His demeanour would assume an unwonted grace and even dignity; and the sodden creatures around him would sense something of superiority—something which made them less ready to give the usual kicks and cuffs to the poor butt and drudge. At these times he would shew a sardonic humour and make remarks which the folk of Sheehan’s deemed foolish and irrational. But the spells would soon pass, and once more Old Bugs would resume his eternal floor-scrubbing and cuspidor-cleaning. But for one thing Old Bugs would have been an ideal slave to the establishment—and that one thing was his conduct when young men were introduced for their first drink. The old man would then rise from the floor in anger and excitement, muttering threats and warnings, and seeking to dissuade the novices from embarking upon their course of “seeing life as it is”. He would sputter and fume, exploding into sesquipedalian admonitions and strange oaths, and animated by a frightful earnestness which brought a shudder to more than one drug-racked mind in the crowded room. But after a time his alcohol-enfeebled brain would wander from the subject, and with a foolish grin he would turn once more to his mop or cleaning-rag.
I do not think that many of Sheehan’s regular patrons will ever forget the day that young Alfred Trever came. He was rather a “find”—a rich and high-spirited youth who would “go the limit” in anything he undertook—at least, that was the verdict of Pete Schultz, Sheehan’s “runner”, who had come across the boy at Lawrence College, in the small town of Appleton, Wisconsin. Trever was the son of prominent parents in Appleton. His father, Karl Trever, was an attorney and citizen of distinction, whilst his mother had made an enviable reputation as a poetess under her maiden name of Eleanor Wing. Alfred was himself a scholar and poet of distinction, though cursed with a certain childish irresponsibility which made him an ideal prey for Sheehan’s runner. He was blond, handsome, and spoiled; vivacious and eager to taste the several forms of dissipation about which he had read and heard. At Lawrence he had been prominent in the mock-fraternity of “Tappa Tappa Keg”, where he was the wildest and merriest of the wild and merry young roysterers; but this immature, collegiate frivolity did not satisfy him. He knew deeper vices through books, and he now longed to know them at first hand. Perhaps this tendency toward wildness had been stimulated somewhat by the repression to which he had been subjected at home; for Mrs. Trever had particular reason for training her only child with rigid severity. She had, in her own youth, been deeply and permanently impressed with the horror of dissipation by the case of one to whom she had for a time been engaged.
Young Galpin, the fiancé in question, had been one of Appleton’s most remarkable sons. Attaining distinction as a boy through his wonderful mentality, he won vast fame at the University of Wisconsin, and at the age of twenty-three returned to Appleton to take up a professorship at Lawrence and to slip a diamond upon the finger of Appleton’s fairest and most brilliant daughter. For a season all went happily, till without warning the storm burst. Evil habits, dating from a first drink taken years before in woodland seclusion, made themselves manifest in the young professor; and only by a hurried resignation did he escape a nasty prosecution for injury to the habits and morals of the pupils under his charge. His engagement broken, Galpin moved east to begin life anew; but before long, Appletonians heard of his dismissal in disgrace from New York University, where he had obtained an instructorship in English. Galpin now devoted his time to the library and lecture platform, preparing volumes and speeches on various subjects connected with belles lettres, and always shewing a genius so remarkable that it seemed as if the public must sometime pardon him for his past mistakes. His impassioned lectures in defence of Villon, Poe, Verlaine, and Oscar Wilde were applied to himself as well, and in the short Indian summer of his glory there was talk of a renewed engagement at a certain cultured home on Park Avenue. But then the blow fell. A final disgrace, compared to which the others had been as nothing, shattered the illusions of those who had come to believe in Galpin’s reform; and the young man abandoned his name and disappeared from public view. Rumour now and then associated him with a certain “Consul Hasting” whose work for the stage and for motion-picture companies attracted a certain degree of attention because of its scholarly breadth and depth; but Hasting soon disappeared from the public eye, and Galpin became only a name for parents to quote in warning accents. Eleanor Wing soon celebrated her marriage to Karl Trever, a rising young lawyer, and of her former admirer retained only enough memory to dictate the naming of her only son, and the moral guidance of that handsome and headstrong youth. Now, in spite of all that guidance, Alfred Trever was at Sheehan’s and about to take his first drink.
“Boss,” cried Schultz, as he entered the vile-smelling room with his young victim, “meet my friend Al Trever, bes’ li’l’ sport up at Lawrence—thas’ ’n Appleton, Wis., y’ know. Some swell guy, too—’s father’s a big corp’ration lawyer up in his burg, ’n’ ’s mother’s some lit’ry genius. He wants to see life as she is—wants to know what the real lightnin’ juice tastes like—so jus’ remember he’s me friend an’ treat ’im right.”
As the names Trever, Lawrence, and Appleton fell on the air, the loafers seemed to sense something unusual. Perhaps it was only some sound connected with the clicking balls of the pool tables or the rattling glasses that were brought from the cryptic regions in the rear—perhaps only that, plus some strange rustling of the dirty draperies at the one dingy window—but many thought that someone in the room had gritted his teeth and drawn a very sharp breath.
“Glad to know you, Sheehan,” said Trever in a quiet, well-bred tone. “This is my first experience in a place like this, but I am a student of life, and don’t want to miss any experience. There’s poetry in this sort of thing, you know—or perhaps you don’t know, but it’s all the same.”
“Young feller,” responded the proprietor, “ya come tuh th’ right place tuh see life. We got all kinds here—reel life an’ a good time. The damn’ government can try tuh make folks good ef it wants tuh, but it can’t stop a feller from hittin’ ’er up when he feels like it. Whaddya want, feller—booze, coke, or some other sorta dope? Yuh can’t ask for nothin’ we ain’t got.”
Habitués say that it was at this point they noticed a cessation in the regular, monotonous strokes of the mop.
“I want whiskey—good old-fashioned rye!” exclaimed Trever enthusiastically. “I’ll tell you, I’m good and tired of water after reading of the merry bouts fellows used to have in the old days. I can’t read an Anacreontic without watering at the mouth—and it’s something a lot stronger than water that my mouth waters for!”
“Anacreontic—what ’n hell’s that?” several hangers-on looked up as the young man went slightly beyond their depth. But the bank defaulter under cover explained to them that Anacreon was a gay old dog who lived many years ago and wrote about the fun he had when all the world was just like Sheehan’s.
“Let me see, Trever,” continued the defaulter, “didn’t Schultz say your mother is a literary person, too?”
“Yes, damn it,” replied Trever, “but nothing like the old Teian! She’s one of those dull, eternal moralisers that try to take all the joy out of life. Namby-pamby sort—ever heard of her? She writes under her maiden name of Eleanor Wing.”
Here it was that Old Bugs dropped his mop.
“Well, here’s yer stuff,” announced Sheehan jovially as a tray of bottles and glasses was wheeled into the room. “Good old rye, an’ as fiery as ya kin find anyw’eres in Chi’.”
The youth’s eyes glistened and his nostrils curled at the fumes of the brownish fluid which an attendant was pouring out for him. It repelled him horribly, and revolted all his inherited delicacy; but his determination to taste life to the full remained with him, and he maintained a bold front. But before his resolution was put to the test, the unexpected intervened. Old Bugs, springing up from the crouching position in which he had hitherto been, leaped at the youth and dashed from his hands the uplifted glass, almost simultaneously attacking the tray of bottles and glasses with his mop, and scattering the contents upon the floor in a confusion of odoriferous fluid and broken bottles and tumblers. Numbers of men, or things which had been men, dropped to the floor and began lapping at the puddles of spilled liquor, but most remained immovable, watching the unprecedented actions of the barroom drudge and derelict. Old Bugs straightened up before the astonished Trever, and in a mild and cultivated voice said, “Do not do this thing. I was like you once, and I did it. Now I am like—this.”
“What do you mean, you damned old fool?” shouted Trever. “What do you mean by interfering with a gentleman in his pleasures?”
Sheehan, now recovering from his astonishment, advanced and laid a heavy hand on the old waif’s shoulder.
“This is the last time for you, old bird!” he exclaimed furiously. “When a gen’l’man wants tuh take a drink here, by God, he shall, without you interferin’. Now get th’ hell outa here afore I kick hell outa ya.”
But Sheehan had reckoned without scientific knowledge of abnormal psychology and the effects of nervous stimulus. Old Bugs, obtaining a firmer hold on his mop, began to wield it like the javelin of a Macedonian hoplite, and soon cleared a considerable space around himself, meanwhile shouting various disconnected bits of quotation, among which was prominently repeated, “ . . . the sons of Belial, blown with insolence and wine.”
The room became pandemonium, and men screamed and howled in fright at the sinister being they had aroused. Trever seemed dazed in the confusion, and shrank to the wall as the strife thickened. “He shall not drink! He shall not drink!” Thus roared Old Bugs as he seemed to run out of—or rise above—quotations. Policemen appeared at the door, attracted by the noise, but for a time they made no move to intervene. Trever, now thoroughly terrified and cured forever of his desire to see life via the vice route, edged closer to the blue-coated newcomers. Could he but escape and catch a train for Appleton, he reflected, he would consider his education in dissipation quite complete.
Then suddenly Old Bugs ceased to wield his javelin and stopped still—drawing himself up more erectly than any denizen of the place had ever seen him before. “Ave, Caesar, moriturus te saluto!” he shouted, and dropped to the whiskey-reeking floor, never to rise again.
Subsequent impressions will never leave the mind of young Trever. The picture is blurred, but ineradicable. Policemen ploughed a way through the crowd, questioning everyone closely both about the incident and about the dead figure on the floor. Sheehan especially did they ply with inquiries, yet without eliciting any information of value concerning Old Bugs. Then the bank defaulter remembered the picture, and suggested that it be viewed and filed for identification at police headquarters. An officer bent reluctantly over the loathsome glassy-eyed form and found the tissue-wrapped cardboard, which he passed around among the others.
“Some chicken!” leered a drunken man as he viewed the beautiful face, but those who were sober did not leer, looking with respect and abashment at the delicate and spiritual features. No one seemed able to place the subject, and all wondered that the drug-degraded derelict should have such a portrait in his possession—that is, all but the bank defaulter, who was meanwhile eyeing the intruding bluecoats rather uneasily. He had seen a little deeper beneath Old Bugs’ mask of utter degradation.
Then the picture was passed to Trever, and a change came over the youth. After the first start, he replaced the tissue wrapping around the portrait, as if to shield it from the sordidness of the place. Then he gazed long and searchingly at the figure on the floor, noting its great height, and the aristocratic cast of features which seemed to appear now that the wretched flame of life had flickered out. No, he said hastily, as the question was put to him, he did not know the subject of the picture. It was so old, he added, that no one now could be expected to recognise it.
But Alfred Trever did not speak the truth, as many guessed when he offered to take charge of the body and secure its interment in Appleton. Over the library mantel in his home hung the exact replica of that picture, and all his life he had known and loved its original.
For the gentle and noble features were those of his own mother.
