II. An Antecedent and a Horror
1
Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied
in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and
obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that
universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning
of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his
solitary ways and queer
chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking
man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of
Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's
at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill
west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761
he replaced this with a
larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he
did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged
in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped
rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of
the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain his nondescript
aspect of a man not
greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted
up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always
explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practised
a simplicity of living which did not wear him our. How such simplicity
could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive
merchant, and with the queer
gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not
very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons
for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part,
that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do
with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from
London and the Indies on his ships
or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when
old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across
the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless
talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly
bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed
a
wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of
various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage
their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured
potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations
to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had
passed since the stranger's advent,
and without producing more than five years' apparent
change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly;
and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always
shewn.
Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too,
a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared,
and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which
he was glimpsed at all hours, and under all conditions, was notorious;
though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be
termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road
he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the
summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd
times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and
caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband
dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance,
probably due to a mixture of
negro blood. In the lead-to of this house was the laboratory
where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters
and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small read door
would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and
furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that
the close-mouthed
"chymist" - by which they meant alchemist - would not
be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this
farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things
to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place
in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and
they did not like the large numbers of
livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount
was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk,
and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week
as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there
was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with
only high narrow slits
for windows.
Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's
town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761,
when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed
one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took
the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was
less mystery, it is true;
but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness
of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous
indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large
amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived,
and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at
highly unseasonable
times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet
farm to give the place a bad name.
In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means
undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and
trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better
sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to
enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of
Salem needed no
introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph
Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England
and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he
deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But
for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never
actually rebuffing a visitor, he always
reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of
anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic
arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull though having
moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous
wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not
neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very
short while because of
some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's
discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one
winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old
man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning
Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man
had been hideously shocked, and
could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss
of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
More definite, however, was the reason why another man
of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt,
an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came
from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing,
and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the
best residence section. He lived
in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first
coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope,
his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books.
Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt
early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other
callers at the house had been. His
admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides
the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable
battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including
Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave,
Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory
whither he had never invited
anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's
coach.
Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really
horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books
in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects
which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him
with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the
owner in exhibiting them contributed
much of the prejudice. This bizarre collection, besides
a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy,
embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known
to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy
and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum,
Geber's Liber
Investigationis, and Artephius's Key of Wisdom all were
there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus,
Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetsner's edition, Roger Bacon's
Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius's De Lapide
Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented
in profusion, and Mr.
Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume
conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth
the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he
had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the
exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport,
in the province of the
Massachussetts-Bay.
But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most
impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table
there lay face downwards a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical
marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about
its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes
beneath
the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could
not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage
underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the
underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected
him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days,
writing it down from memory in his
diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend
Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It
read:
'The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and
preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his
own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his
Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust,
a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of
any dead Ancestour from
the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.'
It was near the docks along the southerly part of the
Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph
Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned
the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and
the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange
furtive signs of protection when
they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with
its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon
Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where
the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated
and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique,
St. Eustatius, Havana, or
Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which
these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible
part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned
loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with
this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack
one or more men. That many of
the errands had concerned the farm of Pawtuxet Road,
and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place,
was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for
Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would
desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their
replacement in the West Indies
became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
By 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected
of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing
because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The
last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758,
for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to
New France were
quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable
process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency
with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers;
and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions
among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not
been
ordered on, no one can tell.
Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering.
He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper,
and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save
the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt,
rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers
as James Green, at the Sign of
the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign
of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the
Frying-Pan and Fish near New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon
him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the
Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers,
made him one of the prime
exporters of the Colony.
Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit
of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely
to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head
of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same
year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He
replaced many of the books of the
public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and
bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted
Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk
or "causey" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but
excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When
the Whitefield adherents
broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded
Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though
his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety
once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation
and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.
2
The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged
in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last
to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down
or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing.
Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there
came indeed a slight abatement in the
visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after
the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise
have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions,
for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of
uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion.
His rate of food
consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally
high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his
accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person
- save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between
the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly
small number for
whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either
to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett
Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character
were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become
impressed upon him.
But of course the effect of all this belated mending was
necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed
the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been
enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would
be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they
may have been, apparently
required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since
a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he
had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different
region just then. Judgement demanded that he patch up his relations with
the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a
signal for hushed conversation,
transparent excuses or errands elsewhere, and a general
atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced
to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ,
were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only
by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage,
a promissory note, or a bit
of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many
cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power
of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the
final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with
the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had
so glibly at his tongue's end.
About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate
expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit,
he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride
some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home
impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance;
reasons so
far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers
found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them;
but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware
of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his
would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon
whose parents he might exert a suitable
pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all
easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way
of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed
down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower
of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only
daughter Eliza seemed
dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects
as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of
Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house
on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age,
and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father
permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House
Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's
death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic
life. A sampler of hers,
worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found
in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's
death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments
with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been
painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her
engagement to young Ezra
Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise,
was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place
on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of
the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony
being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the
event very briefly.
and in most surviving copies the item in question seems
to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search
in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement
the meaningless urbanity of the language:
'Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town,
Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee
Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person,
to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.'
The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by
Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection
of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat
antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment
by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however,
was not to be
denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented
by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold.
His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the
sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter
ostracism was somewhat torn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange
bridegroom
astonished both her and the community by displaying an
extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was
now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was
much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed
more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of
residence. Only one person
remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful
ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly
broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet
and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose
which boded no good to the usurping husband.
On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was
born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which
both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage,
in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist
affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage
two years before,
was stricken from most copies of the church and town
annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the
greatest difficulty after his discover of the widow's change of name had
apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest
which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very
curiously through correspondence
with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken
with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak
of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his
great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed
to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness,
Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted
Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous
as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been
executed on a wall-
panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but
neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate
disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual
abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on
the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, as was stated, in a condition of suppressed
excitement or suspense; as if expecting
some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange
discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part,
for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes
on that subject.
His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and
he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph
Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of
the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage
of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in
1763, and was thereafter his best
customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette
that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespeare's Head. In politics
he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime
strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacher's Hall
in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town
with a pro-Ward vote in
the General Assembly did more than any other thing to
wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely,
sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was
no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs
of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and
his doings whenever he was
in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with
a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following
the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay.
He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was
once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.
3
In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was
very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for
the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant
place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed
to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what
he had found or learned or made;
but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the
longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by
him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in
July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession
of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able
to impart.
But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased
with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that
more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom
he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had
been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits
were constantly decreasing.
Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm;
although there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which,
though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to
graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's
change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage
were necessarily
brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging,
had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk
and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as
they had never had before.
Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels
had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when
every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar
Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the
rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were
continuous commonplaces.
But Weeden, night after night following the lighters
or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the
Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's
armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the
change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes,
who were carried down and
across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the
shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across
country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone
outbuilding which had only five high narrow slits for windows. After that
change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves
ceased at once, and for a
time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about
the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew
wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would
go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they
would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and
widely varied appearance.
Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the
usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking
it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the
negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which
a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of
coffins.
Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity;
visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by
without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow.
Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road
or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might
have left. Finding his own vigils
interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion
named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absence; and between
them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That
they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would
be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead,
they wished to learn
something definite before taking any action. What they
did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many
times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks.
All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted
down in a non too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers
have timidly repeated from the
statements which they finally made - and according to
which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace,
of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy
comprehension.
It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced
that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable
staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm.
The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with
enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory
being in a lean-to toward
the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground.
This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices
heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret
passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro
whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations.
After that date, however,
they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they
ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic
pain or fury, rumblings of conversations and whines of entreaty, pantings
of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages,
all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable
in reply, reproof, or
threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons
must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those
captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had
ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many
that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The
nature of the conversations seemed
always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting
some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in
his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently
used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides
a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families
were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were
historical or
scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places
and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was
questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370,
as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked
the prisoner - if prisoner he were - whether the order to slay was given
because of the Sign of the
Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath
the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne had spoken the
Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted
to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and
muttering and a bumping sound.
None of these colloquies was ever ocularly witnessed,
since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse
in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden
exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen
in the autumn of 1764 in Hacher's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania,
had
given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as
'A View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are
represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted
Towers, and Hills, likewise the Suffering of Our Saviour from the Garden
of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of
Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious.'
It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept
close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave
a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs
on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house,
and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of
action to regions below.
That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear
from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then
from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure;
whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the
high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was
found an arched oaken door in
a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance
to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been
constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how
easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from
the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed!
During the heavy
spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye
on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed
to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and
animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally
there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock
farm, and a locality where
old Indian bury-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith
drew their own inferences.
It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still
debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering
business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the
burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer,
the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance
concerning
strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed
schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit
one early morning the scow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel
Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence.
When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing
fact that its cargo
consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned
to "Sailor A. B. C.", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just
off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour
bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty at Newport, at a loss what to do
in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of
the unlawful secrecy of the
entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's
recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island
waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour,
though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark
in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some
connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen.
His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge,
and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take
much imagination
to link him with a freakish importation which could not
conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious
of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions
of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps
that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short
of admitting his
participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt
whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest
theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
The following spring, like that of the year before, had
heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind
the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number
of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean
chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of
Pawtuxet about a mile
below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace
to join the placed landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed
the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their
sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down
the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls.
Of course the Pawtuxet in a
long river which winds through many settled regions abounding
in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but
the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the
things stared as it shot down to the still waters below, or the way that
another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from
that of objects which normally
cried out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just
then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely
enough there remained the evidence of an extensive cave-in. There was,
however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche
had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith
went to the extent of some
experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success
- or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate
on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been
ashore at the time.
4
By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was
ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts
to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge
that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant
he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand
knew him well enough not to
doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently
influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy
took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith
present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen
that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else
in the town, he had had black
suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed
only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely.
At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence
upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately
to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence;
ascertaining
their views and following whatever advice they might
have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this
was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and
above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there
be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful
Salem panic of less than a century before
which had first brought Curwen hither.
The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin
West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar
and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had
just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street
schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane;
ex-
Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the
Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions;
John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers,
John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates,
and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen,
whose erudition
was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge
of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of
phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active
measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought
together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility
of deciding
whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony,
Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest
expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat
sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not
one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and coördinated
action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare
of the town
and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late
in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen
Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given
to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned
to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole
assemblage before
the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear
a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity
best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than
legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently
at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave
town. Nameless
reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature
complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean
burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted
the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner
things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm
by a large raiding-party of
seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance
to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks
and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined.
If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned
out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly,
and even the widow and her
father need not be told how it came about.
While these serious steps were under discussion there
occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for
a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moon-light
January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river
and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to
every window; and people around
Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically
along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a
baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour
of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets
hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search.
The next morning,
however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found
on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where
the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity
of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It
was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in
the patriarchs did that rigid
face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory.
They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear;
for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as
to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died
full fifty years before.
Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering
the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across
Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy,
and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where
the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious
tracks in the
snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many
booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could
be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the
town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints
back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he
well knew it would be;
and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly
trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight.
Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy
on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly.
The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use,
whilst the
whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible
to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's
likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson
Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions
till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited
the old North Burying
Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave.
They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders
to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the
naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which
made the coöperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and
preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward
found it, ran as follows.
I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters
in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village.
Certainely, there was Noth'g but ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H.
rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did
not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were
not Righte
from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I
have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded
by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have
you Observe what was told to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle upp, for
you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of ------, and can
judge how truely that
Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe
not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that
can in Turne call up Somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices
may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shal not wish to
Answer, and shal commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of
your know'g what Ben
Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious
who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah
and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe
my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint
me with what ye Black Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under
ye
Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye lend'g of ye MS.
you speak of.
Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked
equal thought, especially for the following passage:
I will observe what you say respecting the sending of
Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect
them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish
to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be
missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how
hard it is to be sure. It seems a great
Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in
Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's or Christ Church) it can
scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I
rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to
imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be
guided by you in all Matters. I am
impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's
Wharf.
A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and
even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single
oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities
at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian,
although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever
delivered to Curwen,
though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem
as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain
quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious
letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome
character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and
it is in the secret assemblages of
sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen
in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits
of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under
development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that
something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually
worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet
Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with
which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest
neighbours to his farm, the
Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting
into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building
with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly
communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive
leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed
the Fenners that
some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful
because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and
he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of
the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence
skipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether
the ruse was wholly
believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things
is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any
evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the
duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every
incident which took place there.
5
The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting
unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at
last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According
to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday,
April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of
the Golden Lion on Weybosset
Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent
men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen,
with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great
periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor
Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother
Esek, whom he had
initiated at the last moment with the permission of the
rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead
the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber,
after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered
seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders
as they sat in the rear
apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose
duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach
for the farm.
About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge,
followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour
there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed
man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later,
as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden
appeared; and the
raiders fell silently into military order in the street,
shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they
had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating
citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader,
Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and
Dr. Bowen; together with
Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though
absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and
their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle
apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle
rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's
church some of the men
turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying
outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and
shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge.
Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of
trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At
the foot of that hill, and along the
narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed;
Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a
blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously
agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their
intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and
the strange light had soon afterward shot once more into the sky, but there
were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late.
Even as this news was given
another great glare arose toward the south, and the party
realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural
wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions;
one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and
guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until
summoned by a
messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men
under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the
Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high,
steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings
themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson
to the cryptical stone
edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow
Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to
preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by
a final emergency signal.
The river party would break down the hillside door at
the sound of a single whistle-blast, then wait and capture anything which
might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts
it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest
of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept
these respective signals in an
analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and
at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered,
and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within
the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the
immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing
equally and entering the
unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building.
Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and
he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had
with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any
upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing,
of course, was nearly out of the
whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger
if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins
to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson
to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's
party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin
as soon as a
messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple
to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver
the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their
simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions
left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the
river valley and the
hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend
to teh actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party,
records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by
the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal
whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and
a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one
man thought he caught
some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself
felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air.
It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes
and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment
to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the
night's doings or of him who had
been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the
messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed;
for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something
obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart.
It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone
into that zone
of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something
imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something
which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there
was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there
are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the
shore caught a nameless awe
which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the
rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is
the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which
set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight
in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew
another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from
whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing
columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the
Curwen dogs,
followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated
the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft
of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick
sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come
a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which
the correspondent Luke Fenner had
represented in his epistle by the characters 'Waaaahrrrrr-R'waaahrrr.'
This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere
writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted
completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further
but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion
of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all
the dogs began to bark
frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so
marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell
of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the
third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it.
Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing
but even more horrible than the
those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily
plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from
its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where
the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened
men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell
to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin
was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few
words belched in frenzy:
Almighty, protect thy lamb! Then there were more shots,
and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters
of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother,
exclaimed that he saw "a red fog" going up to the stars from the accursed
farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke
admits the significant
coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive
fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur
of the three cats then within the room.
Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became
suffused with an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the
sea could have prevented its being notice by the shore party or by any
wakeful souls in the Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any
of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching,
amorphous fear beyond that
of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came
the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It
thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes
died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil
as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for
it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the
writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac
intonations: 'DEESMEES JESHET BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA ENITEMOSS.' Not till the
year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in
mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola
had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
An unmistakable human shout or deep chorused scream seemed
to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown
stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing
distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted
ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate,
though no
auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point
it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter.
Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores
of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth
from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all
things. Spirals of acrid smoke
ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared
and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and
unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door
and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of
them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that
the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the
order seemed, the aspect of
him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it
a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner,
which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what
was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters
were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion.
Charles Ward had one detail to add as
a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for
ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there
was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted
body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced.
What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could
be seen in its burnt and
twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly
allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
6
Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could
ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the
vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party.
There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders
destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight
sailors had been killed, but although
their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied
with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The
same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which
were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had
accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging
to all the raiders, a thing
which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders,
Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their
wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding
of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged,
sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action
and simple, orthodox
religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness
and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning
was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered
memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to
play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little
more than a twelvemonth afterward
Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship
Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out
of unwholesome images.
There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed
leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when
needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained,
been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give
details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end,
and Charles Ward had only
a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint
was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's
confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting.
The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are
left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as
a mute clue to the
abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more
probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from
what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit
cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can
not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up Somewhat
against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of
the Lesser, lest the Greater shal not wish to Answer, and shal commande
more than you.
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last
unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity,
Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed
Joseph Curwen.
The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead
man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of
the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and
had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of
the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon
uncovered enough rumours to whet
his horror and cause him to demand that the daughter
and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining
papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's
grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from
that bluff mariner and anyone else ever gained repecting the end of the
accursed sorcerer.
From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory
became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to
the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit
only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his
disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar
in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods
decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever
to have been.
Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772,
sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane
till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul,
remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable
rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800
even these had
fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the
tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may
have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst
which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners
to mutter once in a while to himself, "Pox on that ------, but he had no
business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd ------
had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his ------ home.'
