H.P. Lovecraft: Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family - short story review

It starts with the author telling us of the suicide of the main character (which is an interesting choice from the writer's standpoint since it makes us look into what made him do it and try to anticipate his madness), it ends...well, with the start of the story; and it lacks the usual tension and horror which is characteristic to Lovecraft. Despite being very short, it packs a lot of themes, like African mythology, archaeological mystery, the perils of colonialism and what I call "lost civilization nerd-fest". Like most of Lovecraft's short stories, it seems like a build-up for something more, so it's hard to judge it on its own.

It's a strange family tale of the House of Jermyn, told briefly through a few generations, starting from Sir Wade Jermyn, an archaeologist who lost his mind because of his expedition to Congo, in which he witnessed...weird things.

The story ultimately centers at its most recent head of the family, Arhur Jermyn, whose description arguably resembles Lovecraft himself—"Though of poetic rather than scientific temperament, he planned to continue the work of his forefathers in African ethnology and antiquities, utilising the truly wonderful though strange collection of Sir Wade. With his fanciful mind he thought often of the prehistoric civilization in which the mad explorer had so implicitly believed, and would weave tale after tale about the silent jungle city mentioned in the latter's wilder notes and paragraphs..."

And to end it on an uplifting tone: (this is the first sentence of the story) "Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous."

Rating: 3/5