“On The Thing in the Woods by Harper Williams”
“BELKNAP, accept from Theobald’s spectral Claw
These haunting Chapters of daemoniack Awe;
Such nightmare Yarns we both have often writ,
With goblin Whispers, and an Hint of IT,
Till sure, we’re like to think all Terror’s grown
A sort of private Product of our own!
Lest, then, our Pride our sober Sense mislead,
And make us copyright each hellish Deed,
’Tis ours to see what ghastly Flames can blaze
From Spooks and Ghouls that other Wizard raise!”
–H. P. Lovecraft (1924)
“I am the nursery magic Fairy,” she said. “I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real,”—Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit (1922)
“The most incongruous things have fewer degrees of separation than we think.”
—”Curiosities: The Thing in the Woods by Harper Williams”, Stefan Dziemianowicz. Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 2000
Margery Williams Bianco (1881-1944) had her first professional publication in 1902. More than a decade later (1914), her fourth book, The Thing in the Woods, was set in Pennsylvania where she was currently living. It however was not a success even a decade after that, despite Lovecraft’s recommendation to his young correspondent Frank Belknap Long.
Two years before the Providence poesy above, in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real was Bianco’s first major success under her own name, and she never looked back, becoming a celebrated children’s author. Other works included 1925’s Poor Cecco: The Wonderful Story of a Wonderful Wooden Dog, splendidly illustrated by Arthur Rackham. In 1971, upon the establishment of the Newberry Honor for children’s literature, her body of that work was posthumously honored.
This excerpt of Thing is taken from a revised US version, with Williams using the nom de plume “Harper Williams”. Neither Grandpa Theobald or Belknapius (Lovecraft and Long) are recorded of being aware of the writer’s gender. S. T. Joshi and others cite it as a possible influence to “The Dunwich Horror” (see quote above as well as Joshi notes to Lovecraft’s poem in The Ancient Track [Hippocampus, 2013]), including among other similar motifs it’s use of twin brothers, one more monstrous than the other. We present this then to show that possible influence and give a taste of a pulp flavor not usually found in the gentle tales of stuffed animals…