Notes on "The Tomb"

The Tomb is a fine story. It is considerably better (in my opinion) than "The Beast in the Cave". The main character is named Jervas Dudley, or is it Jervas Hyde? The character's description is one we will see again...

My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreation of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home.

I do believe that's a young Lovecraft.

You will notice that our dreamer and visionary once again studied ancient and little known books during childhood and places importance on ancestry and ancestral homes.

When reading "The Tomb" for vision and dream we must decide whether Jervas entered physically into the tomb or sat with his eyes half open, staring at the tomb's door hallucinating many strange events and encounters with the dead. I do believe the latter is the case. I am impressed by Lovecraft's insight into sensation, perception, and what we believe to be reality:

Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of supersight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.

The key is an important element in the story. The key allows Jervas to enter the tomb. I have personal experience with a similar key. I found it several years before I found Lovecraft.

In a small wooden chest belonging to my mother I found many trinkets and curious items. There were rings and necklaces and many curious bobbles. In the chest were also two small leather-bound books. One of the books was more interesting to me than the other since it had the word "Ritual" in foil upon the leather. I was caught going through the chest and asked my mother about the book. She said it was a book for Freemasons. I knew that some of the men in my family had been Masons, but my mother told me it belonged to a woman Freemason in our family who had died long ago. She told me a story about a woman hiding in a grandfather clock. She also told me the book should have been destroyed.

A few days after I first saw the chest I went back to it in hopes of reading a bit from the forbidden book. When I opened the chest there were no books. There was however a key. It was an old, heavy key. I picked it up and felt it to be significant so I kept it.

I carried the key and often wore it on a string or leather around my neck. Soon the key began appearing in my dreams. The key allowed me to enter locked and hidden places.

When I first read Lovecraft's "The Tomb" I could not believe what I was reading. I had my very own ancient key hanging from my neck as I read the words:

Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain.

and then the words:

My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my neck, its presence known only to me.

Then, toward the end of the story Lovecraft throws us the name Hiram. I have no clue what Lovecraft might have read about Freemasonry, but I would like to know. Beyond the possible nod to Freemasonic lore of the Hiram Key, there is a possible connection to magical lore. I wonder why Lovecraft chose the elements he did for his stories. I would imagine he was not conscious of the magical parallel.

The key may be H'Iram, meaning "of Irem" or "Belonging to Irem". The key is used in a set of practices involving the control of dreams and visions. No matter how improbable it is that Lovecraft knew about any of this, he may have known of someone who stumbled upon similar methods without the magical significance. That man is Robert Louis Stevenson. Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was written using a method similar to the use of the key to Irem.

---For those interested, I did again see another copy of the little leather book with the word "Ritual". It seems that the book is not so rare. It is none other than Duncan's Ritual.