H.P. Lovecraft. The Street
The Street
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1920?
Published December 1920 in The Wolverine, No. 8, p. 2-12.
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be
those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of
the Street.
Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of our
blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At first it was
but a path trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to the
cluster of houses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growing
cluster of houses and looked about for places to dwell, they built cabins
along the north side, cabins of stout oaken logs with masonry on the side
toward the forest, for many Indians lurked there with fire-arrows. And in
a few years more, men built cabins on the south side of the Street.
Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who most of the
time carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also their bonneted
wives and sober children. In the evening these men with their wives and
children would sit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple
were the things of which they read and spoke, yet things which gave them
courage and goodness and helped them by day to subdue the forest and till
the fields. And the children would listen and learn of the laws and deeds
of old, and of that dear England which they had never seen or could not
remember.
There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street. The
men, busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew how to
be. And the children grew up comfortable, and more families came from the
Mother Land to dwell on the Street. And the children's children, and the
newcomers' children, grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the
cabins gave place to houses - simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood,
with stone steps and iron railings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy
creations were these houses, for they were made to serve many a
generation. Within there were carven mantels and graceful stairs, and
sensible, pleasing furniture, china, and silver, brought from the Mother
Land.
So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoiced as its
dwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been only strength
and honour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintings and
music came to the houses, and the young men went to the university which
rose above the plain to the north. In the place of conical hats and
small-swords, of lace and snowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over
which clattered many a blooded horse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and
brick sidewalks with horse blocks and hitching-posts.
There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples of dignity;
so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure and twittering
bird-song. And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged
paths and sundials, where at evening the moon and stars would shine
bewitchingly while fragrant blossoms glistened with dew.
So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change. Once, most of
the young men went away, and some never came back. That was when they
furled the old flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But
though men talked of great changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk
were still the same, speaking of the old familiar things in the old
familiar accounts. And the trees still sheltered singing birds, and at
evening the moon and stars looked down upon dewy blossoms in the walled
rose-gardens.
In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, or periwigs in the
Street. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks, tall
beavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distance - first
strange puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, many
years later, strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other
directions. The air was not quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the
place had not changed. The blood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned
the Street. Nor did the spirit change when they tore open the earth to lay
down strange pipes, or when they set up tall posts bearing weird wires.
There was so much ancient lore in that Street, that the past could not
easily be forgotten.
Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of old knew it
no more, and many knew it who had not known it before, and went away, for
their accents were coarse and strident, and their mien and faces
unpleasing. Their thoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the
Street, so that the Street pined silently as its houses fell into decay,
and its trees died one by one, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds
and waste. But it felt a stir of pride one day when again marched forth
young men, some of whom never came back. These young men were clad in
blue.
With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees were all gone
now, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap, ugly new
buildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despite the
ravages of the years and the storms and worms, for they had been made to
serve many a generation. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street,
swarthy, sinister faces with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners
spoke unfamiliar words and placed signs in known and unknown characters
upon most of the musty houses. Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid,
undefinable stench settled over the place, and the ancient spirit slept.
Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution were raging
across the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects were
flocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of these took
lodgings in the battered houses that had once known the songs of birds and
the scent of roses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the
Mother Land in her titanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once
more floated the old flag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer,
yet glorious tricolour. But not many flags floated over the Street, for
therein brooded only fear and hatred and ignorance. Again young men went
forth, but not quite as did the young men of those other days. Something
was lacking. And the sons of those young men of other days, who did indeed
go forth in olive-drab with the true spirit of their ancestors, went from
distant places and knew not the Street and its ancient spirit.
Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most of the young
men returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer, yet did
fear and hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for many had
stayed behind, and many strangers had come from distance places to the
ancient houses. And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer.
Swarthy and sinister were most of the strangers, yet among them one might
find a few faces like those who fashioned the Street and moulded its
spirit. Like and yet unlike, for there was in the eyes of all a weird,
unhealthy glitter as of greed, ambition, vindictiveness, or misguided
zeal. Unrest and treason were abroad amongst an evil few who plotted to
strike the Western Land its death blow, that they might mount to power
over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted in that unhappy, frozen land
from whence most of them had come. And the heart of that plotting was in
the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alien makers of discord and
echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned for the appointed
day of blood, flame and crime.
Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said much but could
prove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badges linger and
listen about such places as Petrovitch's Bakery, the squalid Rifkin School
of Modern Economics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. There
congregated sinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speech
guarded or in a foreign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with their
forgotten lore of nobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants
and dewy rose-gardens in the moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler
would come to view them, and would try to picture them in their vanished
glory; yet of such travelers and poets there were not many.
The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained the leaders of a
vast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launch an orgy of
slaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fine old
traditions which the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered
about filthy gutters; handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in
many characters, yet all bearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these
writings the people were urged to tear down the laws and virtues that our
fathers had exalted, to stamp out the soul of the old America - the soul
that was bequeathed through a thousand and a half years of Anglo-Saxon
freedom, justice, and moderation. It was said that the swart men who dwelt
in the Street and congregated in its rotting edifices were the brains of a
hideous revolution, that at their word of command many millions of
brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from
the slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the
land of our fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated, and
many looked forward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which the
strange writings hinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the
guilt. None could tell just whose arrest might cut off the damnable
plotting at its source. Many times came bands of blue-coated police to
search the shaky houses, though at last they ceased to come; for they too
had grown tired of law and order, and had abandoned all the city to its
fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearing muskets, till it seemed as if
in its sad sleep the Street must have some haunting dreams of those other
days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked along it from the
woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet could no act be
performed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart, sinister men
were old in cunning.
So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered in
Petrovitch's Bakery, and the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, and the
Circle Social Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vast
hordes of men whose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation.
Over hidden wires strange messages traveled, and much was said of still
stranger messages yet to travel; but most of this was not guessed till
afterward, when the Western Land was safe from the peril. The men in
olive-drab could not tell what was happening, or what they ought to do;
for the swart, sinister men were skilled in subtlety and concealment.
And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night, and will
speak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren; for many of
them were sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that which they
had expected. It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that the
houses were tottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and
worms; yet was the happening of that summer night a surprise because of
its very queer uniformity. It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular
happening, though after all, a simple one. For without warning, in one of
the small hours beyond midnight, all the ravages of the years and the
storms and the worms came to a tremendous climax; and after the crash
there was nothing left standing in the Street save two ancient chimneys
and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anything that had been alive come
alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who came with the mighty
crowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says that all
through the hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in the
glare of the arc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another
picture wherein he could describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and
oaks and maples of dignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the
place's wonted stench there lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in
full bloom. But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers
notoriously false?
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be
those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have told you
of the Street.