OK, One More

Once again, my readers have demonstrated that they have better memories than I. There is indeed an illustration of a gnoll in The Secret of Bone Hill. The illustration in question is by Harry Quinn, an underappreciated TSR artist whose name is rarely brought up in discussions like these.

A couple of things immediately strike me about this piece. Most obviously, the gnoll definitely looks more wolfish than hyena-like, an impression that's probably heightened by the fact that there are also two actual wolves depicted here. In addition, this gnoll seems to be wearing the same kind of attire (padded or scaled shirt with a leather skirt and huge girdle) originally seen in Sutherland's Monster Manual illustration. Likewise, he wields a spear, which, based on previous illustrations seems to be the signature weapon of gnolls (assuming we count polearms as a flavor of spear).

I find it fascinating how often a single artist set the terms for all those who followed him. As I look more closely at the depictions of various humanoid monsters in D&D, it becomes ever clearer how common this is throughout the game's early history. This is especially true, I think, for monsters, humanoid or otherwise, that are unique to Dungeons & Dragons. Since there was no prior tradition of them on which to draw, there was a good chance that the work of the first artist to draw a given monster would become definitive – the one later artists would look to for inspiration in their own work. That's clearly what has happened in the case of gnolls, even if, as in Harry Quinn's case, he introduced some variations of his own.

A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Gnolls

There's no use in fighting it. You'll be seeing more entries in what has inadvertently become a series for a few more weeks at least, perhaps longer. After last week's post on bugbears, which are a uniquely D&D monstrous humanoid, I knew I'd have to turn to gnolls this week, as they, too, are unique to the game. Perhaps I should clarify that a little. There is no precedent, mythological or literary, for the spelling "gnoll." However, the spelling "gnole" appears in "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles" from Lord Dunsany's 1912 short story collection, The Book of Wonder (as well as in Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles"). 

There can be no doubt that Dunsany's story served as the seeds for the gnolls of D&D. In their description in Book 1 of OD&D, gnolls are described as "a cross between Gnomes and Trolls (. . . perhaps, Lord Sunsany [sic] did not really make it all that clear." The original short story contains no description of the titular creature, leaving Gygax to advance his theory of gnolls being a weird hybrid monster. Artist Greg Bell interprets them thusly:

Sometime in the three years between their first appearance in OD&D (1974) and the publication of the Monster Manual (1977), someone at TSR decided that gnolls were, in fact, "low intelligence beings like hyena-men." That's how they're described in J. Eric Holmes's Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which is where I first encountered them, courtesy of this delightful illustration by Tom Wham:

Meanwhile, the Monster Manual itself, published the same year, gives us this illustration by Dave Sutherland.

The Monster Manual also includes another Sutherland gnoll-related piece, this time of Yeenoghu, the demon lord of gnolls. To my eyes, Yeenoghu looks a lot more hyena-like than does the illustration above, but, even so, they're still broadly similar.

Speaking of Yeenoghu, he reappears in the pages of Deities & Demigods, this time depicted by Dave LaForce. I've always found this version of the demon lord a bit goofy. I'm not sure if it's his grin or the strangeness of the arm that holds his infamous triple flail. 

The AD&D Monster Cards sets are a good source of unusual takes on many monsters and that's especially so in the case of gnolls. Artist Harry Quinn depicts them in a way that, to my eyes, looks decidedly feline. To anyone familiar with the weird phylogenetics of hyenas, that's inappropriate, but it still feels off somehow. Perhaps it's simply the weight of all the previous depictions that makes me think so. In any case, Quinn's version of the gnoll is quite distinctive.

The 2e Monstrous Compendium features what is probably the most hyena-like of all versions of the gnoll, courtesy of James Holloway.

Tony DiTerlizzi provides an even more hyena-like version of the gnoll in the Monstrous Manual, right down the spots on its fur. 

I feel like I have probably overlooked some illustrations of gnolls from the TSR era of D&D, but, if so, they must be fairly obscure, as these are the only ones I could easily find in my collection. What's most notable about the ones I did find is how closely they hew to the post-OD&D notion that gnolls are hyena-men. I'd chalk up most of the differences to artist skill and choice rather than a fundamental disagreement about this fact. In this respect, they're quite similar to bugbears, another distinctly D&D monster whose look stayed largely the same during TSR's stewardship of Dungeons & Dragons.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Ubbo-Sathla

The July 1933 issue of Weird Tales was an impressive one, containing notable stories by several pulp luminaries. In a previous post, I already discussed H.P. Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House", which premiered in this issue. Also present were "The Horror in the Museum" by Hazel Heald (though ghost written by Lovecraft) and "The Hand of Glory," a Jules de Grandin yarn by Seabury Quinn, not to mention stories by Jack Williamson and Edmond Hamilton. 

Then there's the subject of today's post, "Ubbo-Sathla," a very unusual story by Clark Ashton Smith. It's usually classified as a tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, but, aside from an epigraph from The Book of Eibon, which references "Yok-Zothoth" (Yog-Sothoth) and "Kthulhut" (Cthulhu), there's nothing particularly Lovecraftian about the tale. Instead, it's largely another exploration of a theme common in not just Smith's own writings but in many pulp stories of the time: metempsychosis and mental time travel. 

Paul Tregardis, an antiquarian living in London, stumbles upon a "milky crystal in a litter of oddments from many lands in eras" while visiting the establishment of a curio-dealer. Tregardis asks the dealer about the crystal, who replies:

"It is very old – palaeogean, one might say. I cannot tell you much, for little is known. A geologist found it in Greenland, beneath glacial ice, in the Miocene strata. Who knows? It may have belonged to some sorcerer of primeval Thule. Greenland was a warm, fertile region, beneath the sun of Miocene times. No doubt it is a magic crystal; and a man might behold strange visions in its heart, if he looked long enough."

Tregardis is startled to hear this, not least because it reminded him of things he had read in The Book of Eibon. The tome described, among other things, the life of the wizard Zon Mezzamalech, who was said to have possessed a crystal just like the one he'd stumbled upon. Even though he considered The Book of Eibon "sheer superstitious fantasy," there was nevertheless "something about the crystal that continued to tease and inveigle him." Consequently, he purchased it "without bargaining" and "hastened back to his lodgings instead of resuming his leisurely saunter."

There, he opened up his copy of the French translation of The Book of Eibon and re-read those sections that pertained to Zon Mezzamalech and the crystal. 

This wizard, who was mighty among sorcerers, had found a cloudy stone, orb-like and somewhat flattened at the ends, in which he could behold many visions of the terrene past, even to the Earth's beginnings, when Ubbo-Sathla, the unbegotten source, lay vast and swollen and yeasty amid the vaporing slime … 

 Tregardis continued to be "tantalized and beguiled," which led him to stare ever more intently into the "cold, nebulous orb." 

Minute by minute he sat, and watched the alternate glimmering and fading of the mysterious light in the heart of the crystal. By imperceptible degrees, there stole upon him a sense of dream-like duality, both in respect to his person and his surroundings. He was still Paul Tregardis – and yet he was someone else; the room was his London apartment – a chamber in some foreign but well-known place. And in both milieus he peered steadfastly into the same crystal.

After an interim, without surprise on the part of Tregardis, the process of re-identification became complete. He knew that he was Zon Mezzamalech, a sorcerer of Mhu Thulan, and a student of all lore anterior to his own amateur epoch. Wise with dreadful secrets that were not known to Paul Tregardis, amateur of anthropology and the occult sciences in latter-day London, he sought by means of the milky crystal to attain an even older and more fearful knowledge.

 As astounding as this is, this is only the beginning of a process by which Tregardis recalled "unnumbered lives" and "myriad deaths" – as "a warrior in half-legendary battles," "a child playing in the ruins of some olden city," a woman "who wept for the bygone dead," and many, many more. Over the course of the short story, Tregardis finds his mind flung back untold eons, through a host of lives in a variety of times and places, until he reached "the grey beginning of Earth" itself, where "the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors."

"Ubbo-Sathla" is almost entirely devoid of action in the usual sense of the term. The quest of Paul Tregardis is entirely mental – or perhaps psychic is a better word – as he observes and learns from the past he can now view through the agency of the milky crystal orb. Like so many Smith stories, the reader is treated to a verbal phantasmagoria of bizarre and unexplained sights and sensations, mirroring those of the story's protagonist as he plumbs the depths of time and space. Unlike efforts like the widely celebrated "The City of the Singing Flame,"  "Ubbo-Sathla" is not quite as effective. Yet, what it might lack in execution, it makes up for in its ambition. Smith endeavors to show the origin of all life on Earth, at once exhilarating and terrifying. It's thus another worthy example of Clark Ashton Smith's ability to evoke the sometimes contradictory feelings occasioned by the acquisition of knowledge.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Horror on the Links

I find it hard to believe that, after more than two hundred posts in the Pulp Fantasy Library series, I've only ever written a single post about the writings of Seabury Quinn. What makes it so unbelievable is that Quinn was a prolific writer, penning more than 500 pieces of fiction during his 80 years of life, most of which were published in the pages of Weird Tales – including the story I'll be discussing in this post.  

Quinn himself was quite an unusual individual. To the extent that anyone remembers him at all today, it's as a pulp writer, which might have surprised him, since he considered fiction writing to be a sideline to his "real" professions of journalism and law. His legal specialty was, believe it or not, mortuary law. Consequently, he knew a great deal about funerals, funeral homes, embalming, and related subjects that he put to good use in his fiction. He also served as the editor (and occasional writer) of several funerary magazines. 

Quinn created several long-running series of stories, the most successful of which were the tales of French occult detective Jules de Grandin (Grandin being Quinn's middle name). His first appearance was in the October 1925 issue of Weird Tales in a story entitled "The Horror on the Links." The story begins with Dr Trowbridge being awakened in the night by a phone call from Mrs Maitland, informing him that "something dreadful" has happened to her son, Paul, after he returned from a dance at at the country club with Gladys Phillips. 

Physicians' sleep is like a park–public property. With a sigh, I climbed out of bed and into my clothes, teased my superannuated motor to life and set out for the Maitland house.

Young Maitland lay on his bed, eyes closed, teeth clenched, his face set in an expression of unutterable dread, even in his unconsciousness. Across his shoulders and on the back of his arms, I found several long incised wounds, as though the flesh had been raked by a sharp pronged instrument.

Paul Maitland briefly awakens under Trowbridge's care, crying out, "The ape-thing–the ape-thing! It's got me! Open the door; for God's sake, open the door!" Trowbridge uses a sedative to calm Paul and then returns home to catch up on his own sleep. 

The next morning, he awakens to "the front page of the paper lying beside my breakfast grapefruit," announcing "Body of Young Woman Found Near Sedgemore Country Club Mystifies Police." Reading the story, Trowbridge learns that the mutilated body of Sarah Humphreys, a waitress at the country club, was discovered lying in one of the bunkers of the club's golf course. Since Paul Maitland had also been at the same club, Trowbridge immediately assumes a connection between the murder and what happened to the young man.

The doctor's housekeeper, Nora McGinnis, interrupts his reading of the paper to announce that Sergeant Costello and "a Frinchman, or Eyetalian, or sumpin" were both waiting for him downstairs "ter ax ye questions about th' murther of th' pore little Humphreys gurl." Alarmed that he might be considered a suspect, he rushes to meet them. Costello quickly reassures him that this is not the case, only that he wishes to ask him some additional questions about Paul Maitland – and to introduce him to Professor Jules de Grandin of the Paris police. 

De Grandin introduces himself, explaining that, while he does work with the Paris police, his "principal work is at the University of Paris and St. Lazaire Hospital; at present [he] combine[s] the vocation of savant with the avocation of criminologist." Trowbridge admits that he knows De Grandin by reputation and this pleases the Frenchman, who explains his interest in Paul Maitland. Together, they go to the recovering young man and ask him about what he experienced the previous night.

Maitland tells them that he had come across a woman's body, lying across the path. He started toward it and was surprised by a rustling in the trees overhead, as something dropped right down in front of him. He had no idea what the thing was but was sure it was not human, being shorter in height than himself but twice as wide. He carried a .22 automatic in his pocket and repeatedly pointed the weapon at the thing, threatening to shoot if it did not identify itself. The creature was unimpressed and leapt at him, grabbing the gun from his hand and snapping it in half before grabbing him and rending his flesh. Maitland had no idea what the creature was but repeated that "it was hairy as an ape." It's at this point that the true investigation begins, with Trowbridge and De Grandin working side by side for the first time.

"The Horror on the Links" is by no means a story for the ages, even by the standards of pulp literature. It's full of clichéd characters and situations and the ultimate resolution of the story's central mystery is disappointing, to put it mildly. Yet, for all that, there's still something fun about it. Perhaps it's the melodramatic verve with which Quinn presents it all, especially when it comes to De Grandin and Trowbridge and their Holmes and Watson dynamic by way of Thomas Carnacki and Hercule Poirot. There's a strange charm to whole mess of this tale that, for me anyway, almost overcomes its narrative deficiencies. I suppose, too, that I'm simply so fond of the occult detective genre that I'm willing to overlook the flaws of "The Horror in the Links." Even so, no one should read this post and think I am unaware of the story's many issues. Instead, the takeaway should be that there are many metrics by which one can judge the quality of a story – particularly a pulp one – and simple enjoyment is one of them. I enjoyed "The Horror on the Links" and maybe that's enough.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Pledged to the Dead

Among the many lessons of history is that tastes can vary greatly over time. I've oft-lamented, for example, that the name of Abraham Merritt is not better known and lauded today, as he was in his own lifetime. Another author who is, if anything, even more obscure than Merritt is Seabury Quinn. Among the small number of people who still recognize his name, Quinn is often dismissed out of hand as a hack of the lowest sort. This may be due to the fact that, during his lifetime, Quinn wrote over 500 short stories, a great many of which appeared in the pages of Weird Tales (indeed 60% of all issues between 1923 and 1954 include at least one story him). And while it's true that not all of Quinn's output is worthy of consideration, even his worst work often has, in my opinion, clever ideas and obvious authorial enthusiasm. In his day, Quinn was, by far and away, the most popular author writing in Weird Tales and even H.P. Lovecraft, who was no fan of his stories, found him an "exceedingly tasteful & intelligent" man.

One of Quinn's longest running series (nearly 100 stories in all) concerned the detective Jules de Grandin. De Grandin is a French physician, police officer, and expert on the supernatural. Traveling with his companion, Dr. Trowbridge, who plays Watson to his Holmes, he investigates crimes and solves mysteries in which the occult seems to be involved. One of the interesting things about the De Grandin stories is that, while the occult often is involved, that's not universally the case. Some mysteries are revealed to be the work of ordinary, albeit unhinged, human beings and it's this quality that I think contributes to the series's longevity. Starting a tale, you never know at the outset whether there actually is a werewolf on the prowl or if it's all an elaborate hoax concocted to throw De Grandin off the scent.

Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, the De Grandin mysteries are told from the perspective of Trowbridge, who acts as a first-person narrator. The October 1937 story, "Pledged to the Dead," provides a good example both of this device and Quinn's style:

The autumn dusk had stained the sky with shadows and orange oblongs traced the windows in my neighbors' homes as Jules de Grandin and I sat sipping kaiserschmarrn and coffee in the study after dinner. "Mon Dieu," the little Frenchman sighed, "I have the mal du pays, my friend. The little children run and play along the roadways at Saint Cloud, and on the Ile de France the pastry cooks set up their booths. Corbleu, it takes the strength of character not to stop and buy those cakes of so much taste and fancy! The Napoléons, they are crisp and fragile as a coquette's promise, the éclairs filled with cool, sweet cream, the cream-puffs all aglow with cherries. Just to see them is to love life better. They——"

The shrilling of the door-bell startled me. The pressure on the button must have been that of one who leant against it. "Doctor Trowbridge; I must see him right away!" a woman's voice demanded as Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, grudgingly responded to the hail.

"Th' docthor's offiss hours is over, ma'am," Nora answered frigidly. "Ha'f past nine ter eleven in th' marnin', an' two ter four in th' afthernoon is when he sees his patients. If it's an urgent case ye have there's lots o' good young docthors in th' neighborhood, but Docthor Trowbridge——"

"Is he here?" the visitor demanded sharply.

"He is, an' he's afther digestin' his dinner—an' an illigant dinner it wuz, though I do say so as shouldn't—an' he can't be disturbed——"

"He'll see me, all right. Tell him it's Nella Bentley, and I've got to talk to him!"

De Grandin raised an eyebrow eloquently. "The fish at the aquarium have greater privacy than we, my friend," he murmured, but broke off as the visitor came clacking down the hall on high French heels and rushed into the study half a dozen paces in advance of my thoroughly disapproving and more than semi-scandalized Nora.

"Doctor Trowbridge, won't you help me?" cried the girl as she fairly leaped across the study and flung her arms about my shoulders. "I can't tell Dad or Mother, they wouldn't understand; so you're the only one—oh, excuse me, I thought you were alone!" Her face went crimson as she saw de Grandin standing by the fire.

"It's quite all right, my dear," I soothed, freeing myself from her almost hysterical clutch. "This is Doctor de Grandin, with whom I've been associated many times; I'd be glad to have the benefit of his advice, if you don't mind."

She gave him her hand and a wan smile as I performed the introduction, but her eyes warmed quickly as he raised her fingers to his lips with a soft "Enchanté, Mademoiselle." Women, animals and children took instinctively to Jules de Grandin.

It's all fairly typical pulp prose, right down to the rather stereotypical way that De Grandin is portrayed. But, like a lot of pulp authors, if one can look past this -- or, alternately, luxuriate in it -- what one often finds is an engaging mystery filled with spectacle and creativity. In the case of "Pledged to the Dead," the story concerns the young woman, Nella Bentley, whom Dr. Trowbridge has known since she was a child. Nella is engaged to be married to Ned Minton, whom Trowbridge also knows. The two have been sweethearts since they were quite young, so their engagement and eventual marriage was a surprise to no one. However, after a trip to New Orleans, Ned calls off their engagement, claiming that he is no longer worthy of Nella's affections, a situation that his headstrong fiancée does not accept, which is why she turns to Dr. Trowbridge and his associate for help in determining just what has happened to him.

I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that the plot concerns Voodoo and its possible hold over Ned. Why else make the New Orleans connection if not to introduce Voodoo into the tale? Of course, what makes a good Seabury Quinn story worthwhile is not necessarily its originality of its basic ideas but rather the cleverness with which he takes well-worn tropes and plays with them. He does that in "Pledged to the Dead," employing Voodoo and all its paraphernalia in a fun way that makes for a good, if light, read. No one's going to be mentally challenged by a Quinn story -- that was never his intention -- but I do think people will enjoy them. If you've never read any of Seabury Quinn's fiction, it's worth doing so, even if it's just to see why he was so well regarded by the readers of Weird Tales. He's not to everyone's taste but he was very good at what he did.