parentalia

'' charles darwin shocked victorian society by suggesting that man is descended from the ape. this is a shorthand way of expressing the idea that the common ancestor which we share with the hairy apes, the chimpanzee and the gorilla, was more 'ape-like' than 'man-like'. but at the end of the twentieth century, we have discovered that darwin was wrong. apes are descended from man--which is a shorthand way of saying that the common ancestor from which both ourselves and the hairy apes are descended had some distinctly human characteristics, notably upright walking, which the chimp and the gorilla have lost. ...

'' the case we have made seems so secure that we hesitate to press it further, for fear that it may seem that we protest too much and yet many people find the conclusions disturbing, ... that man, chimp and gorilla are not only very closely related, but are all almost equally close to one another. ... even more disturbing, the traditional picture of human evolution is not based on the same sort of analysis as would be applied to any other group... ''

john gribbin and jeremy cherfas, the first chimpanzee.

parentalia

the facts concerning sir arthur jermyn and his family are these...

'' his great-great-great-grandfather, sir wade jermyn, was one of the earliest explorers of the congo region, in 1765 this fearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at huntingdon ... madness was in all the jermyns, and people were glad there were not many of them ...

''the jermyns never seemed to look quite right--something was amiss ...certainly the madness began with sir wade, ... it showed in his collection of trophies ... and appeared strikingly in the oriental seclusion in which he kept his wife ... whom he had met in africa; ... she with an infant son born in africa; had accompanied him back from the second and longest of his trips, and had gone with him on the third and last, never returning. ...

'' wade jermyn's son philip was a highly peculiar person ... he married the daughter of his game keeper, a person said to be of gypsy extraction, but before his son was born joined the navy ... he was heard of as a sailor on a merchantman in the african trade, finally disappearing one night as his ship lay off the congo coast ...

''in the son of sir philip jermyn the family peculiarity took a strange and fatal turn ... robert jermyn began life as a scholar and investigator. it was he who first studied scientifically the vast collection of relics which his mad grandfather had brought from africa ... his second son nevil ... ran away with a vulgar dancer ... he came back a widower with an infant son, alfred who would one day be the father of arthur jermyn. ...

'' the explorer samuel seaton called at jermyn house with a manuscript of notes collected among the ongas ... when sir robert jermyn emerged from his library he left behind the strangled corpse of the explorer, and before he could be restrained, had put to an end to all three of his children, nevil jermyn died in the successful defence of his own two-year old son, ...

'' sir alfred jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday ... at twenty he had joined a band of music-hall performers, and at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant american circus ... arthur jermyn was the son of sir alfred jermyn and a music hall singer ... and arthur jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself ... ''

h.p.lovecraft, arthur jermyn.

i: jermyn family portraits by alex castro via notcothulhu.

a study in xenogamy

'' science, already opressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate extermiator of our species--if seperate species we be ... if we knew what we are, we should do as sir arthur jermyn did, ... arthur jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxed object which had come from africa ...

'' the boxed object was delivered at jermyn house on the afternoon of august 3,1913, being conveyed immediately to the large chamber ... sir arthur jermyn dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box, though the instant sound of hammer and chisel showed that he did not delay the operation ... less than a quarter of an hour later that the horrible scream, undoubtedly in jermyn's voice; was heard ...

'' immediately afterward jermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically toward the front of the house as if pursued by some hideous enemy ... finally disappearing down the stairs to the cellar. ... a smell of oil was all that came up from the regions below ... a stable boy saw arthur jermyn, glistening from head to foot with oil and redolant of that fluid, steal furtively out and vanish on the black moor, ... a spark appeared on the moor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached the the heavens. the house of jermyn no longer existed ...

'' the reason why arthur jermyn's charred fragments were not collected and buried lies in what was found afterward, principally the thing in the box ... it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind--quite shockingly so ... members of the royal anthropological institute burned the thing ... and some of them do not admit that arthur jermyn ever existed.''

h.p.lovecraft, arthur jermyn.

i: ancestor worship at the upright ape.