When I departed Michigan for Rhode Island, it was with the hope that I could view the work and papers of one Professor George Gammell Angell, a professor at Brown University until his death in 1926. He was the person I alluded to in my previous post, the one who studied the visions and dreams people had about Cthulhu and other Elder ones in 1925. His nephew, a fellow academic and the executor of his estate, had collected an made available his uncles' work in a collection entitled "The Call of Cthulhu." The collection includes a clay tablet with a haunting likeness of Cthulhu himself and some terrifying hieroglyphs that I hope to be able to examine closely and compare to my Necronomicon.
I came to Brown seeking answers on the history of the Cthulhu cult, the genesis of these strange visions (which seemed to affect mostly artists, none of whom claimed to know anything about Cthulhu or the Elder Ones before or even after they had dreams in which they provided terrifying descriptions of the same), and why Barack Obama, the keeper of the Necronomicon and as much a leader of the Cult and its associated orders can be said to have, would care to become President -- how would it forward his goals or those of the Cult?
On the first two topics, I learned much. I arrived an hour before my appointment at the John Hay Library, and wandered the stacks collecting my thoughts. At the agreed-upon time, I proceeded to the special collections area, and was led to the collected works of Professor Angell. His experience working with a local artist afflicted by the visions, one H.A. Wilcox. It was he who sculpted the clay tablet (currently stored in the Haffenreffer museum of Anthropology on Brown's Campus) and brought it to professor Angell. Wilcox was fortunate to have brought it to Professor Angell. While any other sensible man would have discounted the bas-relief as the work of a slightly brilliant but deeply troubled artist, Angell knew there was some seriousness to what Wilcox had brought him -- he recognized immediately the likeness of Cthulhu, for he had seen it before.
Professor Legrasse of New Orleans, whose case I mentioned in my last post, appears in the notes of Professor Angell as well. Apparently, and this story is repeated in the 1908 proceedings of the American Archaeological Society, Legrasse brought an artifact for his investigation to the assembled archaeologists for their inspection and help in determining its origins. The artifact in question was as small carving or sculpture of Cthulhu made of an unidentified mineral. Those who say the thing describe it as both strange and terrifying. All assembled agreed that it was ancient, both by nature of its innate character and because the school of design that had created it was plainly lost to the Ages. None could place it in time, nor could the material be traced to any known place on Earth.
Though it could not be traced back to its origin, one of the scientists in attendance had seen the like before. A Professor Channing attested to having seen a crude carving, worshipped by a secluded Eskimo tribe in Western Greenland, that bore a semblance in all important regards to the creature represented by Lagrasse's idol. He could had learned and could tell little more about the Eskimos or their strange form of worship, save that it too involved terrifying rituals and human sacrifice. Eventually, all those assembled admitted that they could not provide information to forward Legrasse's investigation.
Angell's narrative continues with regard to the artist Wilcox. His nightmares like the one that gave birth to the tablet continued for some weeks. Eventually, he took ill in a severe way. He was bedridden for days, though he would eventually make a full and rather miraculous recovery. The professor notes that another artist, similarly afflicted over the same period, died of the mysterious malady. After Wilcox recovered, this was the end of the visions, and the end of Angell's account as well.
After wrapping up in the library, I visited the museum on campus where the tablet was housed, along with some of Wilcox's other works. The tablet was definitely a likeness of Cthulhu, which I had gathered from pictures online. The hieroglyphs were nothing new to me, as they were mostly symbols associated with the common rituals of the cult. I bet it is similar to the Greenland bas-reflief described in the 1908 proceedings, but I will probably never know. Wilcox's other work, all created after the vision of Cthulhu that led him to sculpt his own bas-relief, is both good and terrifying. Clearly, he never recovered from his terrifying dreams. The vistas and geometry he creates are all at the same time inspired, unnatural, and inhuman. Contemplating them, I wondered if the other artists that survived the malady that afflicted him and others created similar work. I also wondered how they had all been (sometimes fatally) afflicted with the same visions of beings that I did not at the time believe to be real.
I did not stay the night in Providence. I resolved to get out of town quickly, since getting access to the special collections required me to be indiscreet about my studies. The annotations of Professor Angell's paper indicated that his nephew had continued his work on the Cthulhu cult after his relatively sudden death, and I hoped to find more about him at the last institution he worked at, Tufts University in Boston. I did not know why at the time, but I still felt like I was in terrible danger because of my studies. Tufts would prove me correct.
