The King in Yellow

In the autumn of 1998, I found myself walking the oak-lined streets of an old city, on a sultry subtropical night. I looked up through the narrow alley between the branches, and saw the rubicund light of Aldebaran gleaming at me. I was at a dead-end in my studies, and knew it, and had no better plans. At the moment the star's light fell on me, I felt a change; my frustration with my life slipped away, replaced by a bittersweet longing for another life I had known only in my dreams. It was soon after that I came into possession of a small press's library-bound edition of The King In Yellow. I had heard it mentioned, of course, in Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature", but in those days, the book was not widely reprinted, nor well-known outside of the small weird fiction community.

Oh, the poisonous beauty of it! The hints that lead you on to a precipice over the cloud-waves of Hali, and leave you there, unsatisfied and precarious!

I'll not spoil the experience for you, except to note that the Paris art student stories of the second half of the book, so often thought to be out of place in this collection, actually have subtle ties to the better-known horror stories.

1) "We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity."

2) "'It is time,' he repeated. Then he took another ledger from the table and ran over the leaves rapidly. 'We are now in communication with ten thousand men,' he muttered. 'We can count on one hundred thousand within the first twenty-eight hours, and in forty-eight hours the state will rise en masse. The country follows the state, and the portion that will not, I mean California and the Northwest, might better never have been inhabited. I shall not send them the Yellow Sign.'
The blood rushed to my head, but I only answered, 'A new broom sweeps clean.'
'The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,' said Mr. Wilde.
'You are speaking of the King in Yellow," I groaned, with a shudder.
'He is a king whom emperors have served.'"

3) "The time had come, the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa."

4) "The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the lake of Hali chilled my face."

5) "For some time I tossed about the bed trying to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that muttering sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-rendering vat or an odour of noisome decay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more distinct, and I began to understand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had forgotten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:
'Have you found the Yellow Sign?'
'Have you found the Yellow Sign?'
'Have you found the Yellow Sign?'"

6) "'Now you listen to me,' he muttered, through his clenched teeth. 'You are already a suspect and—I swear—I believe you are a paid spy! It isn't my business to detect such vermin, and I don't intend to denounce you, but understand this! Colette don't like you and I can't stand you, and if I catch you in this street again I'll make it somewhat unpleasant. Get out, you sleek Prussian!'"

7) "Trent swore silently for a moment and then drew out his watch. Seven o'clock. 'Sylvia will be anxious,' he thought, and hurried back to the river. The crowd still huddled shivering on the bridge, a sombre pitiful congregation, peering out into the night for the signals of the Army of the Loire: and their hearts beat time to the pounding of the guns, their eyes lighted with each flash from the bastions, and hope rose with the drifting rockets."

8) "He turned his eyes upon the secrets of his heart, and read an evil story,—the story of the past, and he covered his face for shame, while, keeping time to the dull pain throbbing in his head, his heart beat out the story for the future. Shame and disgrace."

9) "When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army."

10) "The street is not fashionable, neither is it shabby. It is a pariah among streets—a street without a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l'Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at its respectability and regards with disfavour the correctly costumed students who haunt it. Few strangers go into it."

There are enough touches of brilliance and originality to The King in Yellow that I'm amazed I hadn't heard of Robert W. Chambers before a few weeks ago. The weird bits and the scary bits are well written and have an impact, but that's only about half of the stories in this collection. The rest is kind-of-interesting filler.