In January 1920, about a month after writing “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” Lovecraft wrote “The Terrible Old Man” (DUN, 272-75), a very brief tale (what would today be classified as a short-short story) about a sinister old man living in the New England seacoast town of Kingsport. The Terrible Old Man, evidently a long-retired sea captain from clipper ship days (Melville’s Starbuck in Moby-Dick at one point refers to Captain Ahab as “terrible old man”), has a sinister reputation with the townsfolk. He is “so old that no one can remember when he was young, and so taciturn that few know his real name.” He lives in a “musty and venerable abode.” Beneath his gnarled trees is a collection of weirdly painted large stones, resembling “the idols in some obscure Eastern temple” (272). When some of the townsfolk make so bold as to creep up to his windows and look in, they see him talking to “many peculiar bottles,” in each of which is suspended a lead-weighted pendulum. He addresses the bottles with names of old shipmates, and the pendulums seem to move in response. A trio of robbers come to town to practice their “profession” on him—Lovecraft’s narrator calls it that, with the heavy-handed irony that pervades the tale. They are evidently dealt with in a drastic fashion, for the townsfolk gossip thereafter about “the three unidentified bodies, horribly slashed as with many cutlasses, and horribly mangled as by the tread of many cruel boot-heels” (274). But in this apparently simple account, there is a great deal more than first meets the eye.
One word in the penultimate sentence of the tale provides a sort of graft-point, a point at which the text brings different notions together, a departure-point, as we shall see, for deconstructive reading. Regarding the aftermath of the attempted robbery, we are first told: “But in all this idle village gossip the Terrible Old Man took no interest at all.” Then the penultimate sentence: “He was by nature reserved, and when one is aged and feeble one’s reserve is doubly strong” (275). Reserve, here, is our word. It may suggest either (as an apparently primary signification) “the quality of being reserved, hermit-like, withdrawn,” or it may suggest (as an apparently secondary signification) “that which is kept in readiness for use when needed.” The text at this point, at least on a surface reading, seems to support only the supposedly primary signification, in that the same sentence has referred to the old man as being “reserved,” that is, withdrawn. But the larger narrative, the tale as a whole, strongly tends to “read” the secondary and (at this point) punlike signification into the word, in that the old man’s bottles, to which he speaks presumably to invoke the presence of his long-departed seafaring colleagues, provide a “reserve,” or store of strength, that can be, and apparently is, called up when needed. The text, seemingly literal on the point of insisting, in the penultimate sentence, on the primary signification, dissembles with itself by importing irony from elsewhere in the text into that very passage. The word reserve there indeed is “doubly strong,” plural of interpretation; it not only “serves” us but “re-serves” us. Here we pun at the level of Latin, since serve derives from servire, which owes its existence to servus, “slave,” while reserve derives from re- plus servare, “to save, keep,” hence “to keep back.” Servare in turn derives from the Indo-European root ser-, “to protect,” whence also, by way of the form ser-ow, derives the Greek heros, whence, by back formation, comes the English hero, suggestive enough in itself, though problematically so.
The two significations of reserve translate textually into a question of the Terrible Old Man’s nature. When we are told that “few know his real name,” we may read name as metonymy for nature. Is the old man “reserved,” withdrawn, friendless, weak, vulnerable, helpless? Or is he possessed of reserves—is he covertly strong, capable, powerfully allied, potentially dangerous? There is no question that he appears sinister and frightful; but we find, in this regard, two different belief-systems variously held by the other characters in the tale. There are, on the one hand, the believers in continuity: the continuity between appearance and reality, between seeming and being. For such believers, things are as they seem, and if the old man seems frightful, then he is. On the other hand, there are the believers in discontinuity: discontinuity between seeming and being, between appearance and reality. For such believers, things seem one way but are another, and the old man may have one appearance but a different nature. On the basis of this distinction, we can contrast the townspeople with the robbers. But, as it turns out, these two different “readers” of the Terrible Old Man do not compare in any facile manner. Each group, in trying to occupy its own position in the binary opposition, contains qualities associated with the other group, so that one finds a crossover or chiasmus by which the text subverts itself. We will find a number of other such crossovers.
On the surface, the townspeople observe that the old man seems sinister. His reputation by appearance in this regard is powerful enough to keep them, by and large, at bay. Those few intrepid souls who creep up to the old man’s windows to spy on him in his conversations with the bottles “do not watch him again” (273). The people shun him; he looks sinister and, as far as they are concerned, is so. They are believers in continuity between seeming and being. By contrast, the robbers too know that the old man looks menacing. They have heard the talk of the town, and they know the old man’s reputation: “They were really quite sorry in their way for the lonely, unpopular old fellow, whom everybody shunned, and at whom all the dogs barked singularly.” The old man makes them nervous. We hear that “they did not like the way the moon shone down upon the painted stones” (273). Yet they attempt to rob him, and they would not do so if they thought themselves in any danger. They are, after all, cowards, to judge from their behavior. It takes two of the three of them to approach their victim, with the third waiting close at hand. For the robbers, the old man looks menacing but is really feeble and helpless. They are believers in discontinuity between seeming and being.
But the distinction of belief-systems that so clearly seems to establish a bipolarity between the townsfolk and the robbers is, when more carefully observed, not so simple as that and is in fact self-unraveling. At one point the text tells us that the robbers see “in the Terrible Old Man merely a tottering, nearly helpless greybeard, who could not walk without the aid of his knotted cane, and whose thin, weak hands shook pitifully” (273). In spite of their strong impression of the old man’s reputation, garnered through the perceptions of the townsfolk, the robbers in part do believe after all that the old man is feeble, thus proving themselves (by trying to rob him) to some extent to be believers in continuity between appearance and reality. Despite what they know of the old man from the talk about town, they perceive him as seeming feeble, and they act upon the notion that he really is. They adopt, in spite of themselves, the belief-system of the townsfolk with whom they are supposed to be contrasted.
Conversely, the townsfolk reverse their own position in the bipolarity as well. Since they live in the same town with the old man, they can scarcely fail to have noticed his apparent feebleness, yet they shun him, proving themselves believers, after all, in discontinuity between appearance and reality. They see the old man as physically infirm, yet they believe him to possess some deeper sinisterness belying that impression. They adopt, in spite of themselves, the belief-system of the robbers. They differ not so much from the robbers as from themselves, just as the robbers differ not so much from the townsfolk as from themselves. In each case it is important to realize that this self-differing, this being divided against oneself, is textually necessary. If the robbers did not insist on forming their own perception of the Terrible Old Man in spite of his reputation, they would not attempt to rob him, and there would be no action. If the townspeople did not see the old man as seeming feeble, there would be no intrigue—his possibly real sinisterness would be a logically trivial counterpart to his apparent sinisterness. Each group of “believers,” crediting some system of relation between seeming and being, must turn against itself, must in a fashion resemble the other group more than it resembles itself, in order for the text to function as the text.
But the ambivalence of each group about the old man’s real nature, the heterogeneity of impression that troubles each group, is far from exhaustive of the text’s paradoxically self-sustaining self-displacements. We may observe several other such bipolarities, finding them to be similarly (and, again, necessarily) dismantled.
The townspeople and the robbers stand in apparently (but only apparently) simple contrast, in a binary opposition between homogeneity and heterogeneity. We are told that the robbers “were of that new and heterogeneous alien stock which lies outside the charmed circle of New England life and traditions” (273). The townsfolk, of this “charmed circle”—a phrase which can only be ironic, since, after all, the “circle” contains the old man and his evil reputation—are described as a homogeneous community, while the robbers are not only described outright as “heterogeneous” but also have names to reinforce the notion: Ricci (Italian), Czanek (Slavic), Silva (Portuguese). Yet again we find that each group conceals within itself the characterization assigned to the other group. The townsfolk are scarcely homogeneous when their numbers include the dreaded Terrible Old Man himself. But even if we exclude him, we are left with the fact that among themselves the “normal” townsfolk differ. Some spy on the old man and some do not: “Those who have watched the Terrible Old Man . . . do not watch him again” (273, emphasis added). And the robbers, supposedly heterogeneous, are, after all, in attendance with a commonality of purpose: the robbery itself. Again, each group’s self-differing is textually important. If the robbers, who are evidently less than intrepid, did not harbor homogeneity of purpose within their ascribed heterogeneity, then they would not attempt the robbery. And if the townsfolk did not possess a covert heterogeneity within their apparently close-knit homogeneity, there would again be no mystery, no intrigue, no doubt, no room for speculation. One imagines whispered conversations between townspeople inclined to spy on the old man and townspeople not so inclined. As before, without this turning against self-identity in each group, we would scarcely have a text. At least we would not have this text.
One may contrast the townsfolk and the robbers in yet another way, finding that the bipolarity unravels itself on the level of spatial symbolism. In the celebrated way in which old New England towns are traditionally supposed to draw a sharp and clannish distinction between outsiders and their own people, the townspeople are the insiders, and the robbers (who “lie outside the charmed circle”) are the outsiders. Yet the insiders, the townspeople, observe the old man’s conversations with his “peculiar bottles” only from outside. Peering in through the windows, they act, with respect to the old man, as outsiders. The supposed outsiders, the robbers, are the only ones who confront the old man inside; they are outsiders-become-insiders. Again, the two groups have exchanged characterizations, and necessarily so. If there were no narrative distancing between the old man and the spying townsfolk, then there could be no intrigue, no mystique about the old man. Make him a community member on whom everyone feels comfortable dropping in, and one destroys him as a character. And obviously if the robbers, the supposed outsiders, did not metamorphose into insiders by becoming the only people to confront the old man inside his dwelling, there would be no action. The text functions not in spite of, but because of, its crossovers and self-displacements.
One sees a similar crossover between the robbers and the Terrible Old Man himself. He, as a reclusive figure, is an insider, yet at the end he comes out, reversing his role and taking on the characterization of “outsider” ascribed to the robbers, who in turn have reversed their roles as well. If the old man did not come out, then there would be no partial revelation, no dramatic moment of confrontation in the end. The further problem in all these reversals is that the text finally abjures any definitive statement on whether one character ever comes to resemble another by undergoing a reversal. For example, the old man, as insider-become-outsider, transmutes himself, in terms of symbolic spatial imagery, into what should be a similarity with the robbers, who are expressly outsiders. Yet at the same time, the text is working at making the robbers outsiders-become-insiders, and the effect is that nobody can fully resemble anybody, even symbolically, because nobody has a nature sufficiently fixed to be able to stand as an unequivocal basis for such comparison. No one in the story is self-identical or fully self-present.
We may contrast the old man and the robbers in other ways, but to motivate one such way we should first look at the question of narrative point of view in the tale.
It is interesting enough, when one thinks of the Terrible Old Man’s bottles, that the point of view of the story itself is bottle-shaped—or, more accurately, hourglass-shaped. In the opening lines, we have an omniscient and editorializing narrator, who says sarcastically of “the profession of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva” that “that profession was nothing less dignified than robbery” and who regales us with local talk about the old man (272). Here the point of view is broad, like the upper part of the hourglass. But it quickly narrows, in the middle, to the mentality of the robbers collectively, who size up the old man and plan their escapade. The point of view narrows further, pinching nearly to a literal point, when we enter the mind of the lone Czanek, who waits in the car while the others enter the house. In the end the point of view broadens again, all the way to the ironic-toned omniscient narrator, who closes the tale and completes the form of the hourglass (our gloss of the form).
An hourglass of course thematically suggests the passing of time. But we find that the text, while creating its hourglass imagery, also subverts the notion in its treatment of time. One sees the sand in an hourglass flow through the narrow center, and this is the textual point at which Czanek is waiting in the car. At that point, however, time seems frozen—while Czanek feels time pass, too much of it in fact (“Waiting seemed very long” [274]), it does not seem to finish passing, to bring him the return of his comrades. The date (11 April) has even been given here, all eternity seemingly frozen at the eleventh day of April. At the top of the hourglass, in the text’s opening lines, the sand is not flowing. Here the old man is already (toujours déjà) old. Yet if the sand is not shifting here, then it must all be already in the bottom, sand and time not flowing at all. Indeed the text in the end refers to the old man’s “unremembered youth” (275), seeing him again as always already old, outside of and uninvolved in the passage of time, uncharacterizable as a participant in such mere moments in time as the occasion of an aborted robbery on 11 April. Yet if no sand is flowing, then the text’s own suggestion of the hourglass, the very purpose of such an object, has been undercut.
We may contrast the old man and the robbers in these terms—in terms of the passage of time. Again the contrast yields a problematic relation of the sort on which the text thrives. For the Terrible Old Man, time does not pass; he is ageless, timeless, possessed of only a mythical “unremembered youth.” He is initially described in a static present tense: he “dwells all alone in a very ancient house” and “is, in truth, a very strange person,” so taciturn that “few know his real name” (272). For the robbers, narrated always in the past tense, life is embedded day-to-day in mundane time, which passes in mundane thoughts and actions. Czanek, waiting in the car, feels the tedious crawl of the hands on his watch. Yet, paradoxically, time then seems frozen, not passing at all. When the robbers die, time stops for them altogether, and they move outside the influence of time. They become timeless in death as the old man is timeless in life. They do so of textual necessity, since if they did not, the tale would offer no sense of vindication of the old man, no powerful revelation, no sense of the inevitable come to pass. The old man, on the other hand, lives, survives, and comes finally to be narrated in the past tense (“But in all this idle village gossip the Terrible Old Man took no interest at all” [275]). Paradoxically he becomes, though timeless, possessed of time, the time of his life. Otherwise, if the old man died, then the tale would lose its sense of perpetuity. The old man covertly partakes of the relation to time characterizing the robbers, and conversely—in each case as a matter of textual necessity.
Turning aside from the question of time, as the old man and the robbers do in their own ways, we may find another contrast in characterization. The Terrible Old Man is, both nominally and by reputation, “terrible.” The robbers are limited, weak, defeatable, mundane. Yet by their actions, they are cruel, dishonest, full of malice. If anyone is “terrible,” it is they. The old man, on the other hand, is scarcely “terrible” when he practices violence, and vicarious violence at that, albeit extreme, only when he is himself attacked. Generally he keeps to himself and does not harm anyone. The epithet “terrible” fits him poorly, unless we understand the word as heavily ironic. The text employs transferred epithets to suggest this notion of misapplied description. Small boys love to break the old man’s windows with “wicked missiles” (273), but of course it is not the missiles themselves that are wicked. The robbers are mangled by “cruel boot-heels” (274), but it is obviously the wearers of the boots whom one could describe, perhaps, as cruel. As before, the crossover is a matter of textual exigency, since if the old man were not really a less “terrible” figure than his description suggests, then he would be a stereotypical character, unalloyed with saving features, devoid of interpretability. And if the robbers themselves did not partake of the “terrible” nature ascribed to the old man, then there would be no confrontation.
Similarly, if one contrasts the Terrible Old Man with the townsfolk, supposedly the good and ordinary salt-of-the-earth New Englanders of the “charmed circle,” one notices that even they manage to be more “terrible” than the old man. They spy on him at times, their children have to be restrained from breaking his windows, and all this hostility is unprovoked except by the old man’s reclusive nature and (in the minds of the townspeople) his sinister appearance. Of course if the townsfolk did not wear this mantle of “terrible” character of their own, then they would be stereotypical, goody-two-shoes types, and the tale would lose its tensions. As it is, one comes to feel that the old man is, like Lear, “more sinned against than sinning.”
The effect is to decenter the text or, rather, to observe that the text decenters itself. Despite the title and despite the text’s dissembling attempts to paint the old man as “terrible” and thus to fix him as the center, the text at the same time works hard to unsettle the old man from the position in which it seems to want to place him. The old man interweaves with the townsfolk and with the robbers (two groups that interweave with each other as well), refusing to be unequivocally himself and thus refusing to constitute a center for the text, which indeed has no center. All the characters are self-differing; the three constituents of the tale—old man, Kingsport townspeople, robbers—form a sort of spinning ring, flickering with difference, blurring together with indeterminacy.
There is a certain amount of interest in the name of the town in which the old man lives. We may perhaps gamble (and gambol) a bit with the name “Kingsport.”
Kingsport is naturally understood to be King’s Port. We find that king derives from an Indo-European root gene-, “to give birth,” “to beget,” whence derive also numerous other words, including (via an intermediate form) benign and malign. These derivatives immediately suggest the ambiguous question of the nature of the old man, who, as we have seen, gives rise to etymological suggestions of the hero yet is not centrally or necessarily either a hero or an antihero. The -port in the town’s name derives from per-, “to lead, pass,” which is related to another root per-, meaning “through.” The derivation of portal is the same, and one’s attentions are drawn to the oaken gate in the old man’s stone wall. This portal is both open and closed in the tale, suggesting plurality of condition, the deferring of fixity, the impossibility of constancy. The text is open to the free play of signification and interpretation, closed to any possibility of final or settled understanding: closed to closure.
It is interesting to note that if we read the town’s name not as King’s Port but as King-Sport, a ludic redivision which nothing in the name itself forbids, then we encounter the notion that, since the “king sport” is of course chess, we may see our three constituents as groups of chess pieces on a board that, by now, one can scarcely avoid regarding as surreal and bizarre. One would readily think of associating the Terrible Old Man with the role of king; the townsfolk, one supposes, are pawns; and the robbers are rooks, come to rook the king of his stronghold, his fortunes. To a certain extent, these characterizations seem natural. Like the king at chess, the old man is seemingly weak and has difficulty moving about. But he is strong in the endgame, in which the king (as any chess player can tell you) is as well. The robbers, as swindlers and cheats, make ready rooks, and the townsfolk as pawns, foot soldiers in the drama, seem natural. Yet the robbers get “rooked” in their attempt at playing the game, with the king doing the rooking. And the townsfolk, as pawns (from ped-, “foot,” whence also derives the Latin peccare, “to sin”), aspire to the qualities of the king in their sinning, when it is supposed to be he who sins. In this giddy game of chess, the pieces feint and dance, partake of a Nietzschean “dance of the pen,” blur into each other, refuse to be identical with themselves, overstep their assigned squares. King and pawn try to resemble each other, as do king and rook, rook and pawn, but everyone is so busy being something or someone else that there is nothing to resemble. There can be no resolution, no checkmate, no clear draw even, because we cannot find the king, we cannot be sure that what moves like a rook is a rook, we cannot trust a pawn to mind its proper squares. The game, as “sport,” is not so much sport in the common sense as sport in the sense in which the term is used in genetics. It is a mutation, a refusal of constant or self-present meaning, a strange but self-perpetuating celebration of change: from gene-, a begetting of change and difference.
The Terrible Old Man, whose “terrible” nature we have seen to be made highly problematic by the text, refuses to be “read” in any facile or settled way. He declines even to be the fixed or central subject of the title. Perhaps he is “terrible,” for the most ponderous and enduring reason of all—because he is unreadable.