Supernatural Horror: Authors and Themes

Fritz Leiber's OUR LADY OF DARKNESS:

ANNOTATIONS

Fritz Leiber began work on what was to become Our Lady of Darkness in 1974. In its first, shorter, form, it was completed in March 1975 and appeared in two parts as “The Pale Brown Thing” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (January-February 1977). The final novel version was published as a US hardcover by Putnams in 1977, with a US paperback and UK hardback and paperback editions following in 1978. Our Lady of Darkness won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1978.

These annotations have been compiled by Ro Pardoe and John Howard, with additions from Frank Denton, Don Herron, Roger Johnson, Betty Nicholls, Jane Nicholls, Darroll Pardoe, Dennis Rickard, and Muriel Smith. The annotations were first published in Ghosts & Scholars 21 (1996). They have been slightly revised, and updated, by John Howard in 2003. The page references are to the UK editions of 1978: Millington (hardback) and Fontana (paperback).

Key to Works Cited:

Byfield: Witches of the Mind: A Critical Study of Fritz Leiber by Bruce Byfield (Necronomicon Press, 1991).

Herron: The Literary World of San Francisco and its Environs by Don Herron (City Lights, 1990; original edition Berkeley, 1984).

Light: Fritz Leiber’s autobiographical essay “Not Much Disorder and Not So early Sex”, in The Ghost Light (Ace, 1991; original edition Berkeley, 1984).

Marinacci: Mysterious California by Mike Marinacci (Panpipes Press, 1988)

MRJ: Collected Ghost Stories of M R James (Arnold, 1931 etc).

NOTES

Passim: All of the topographical details of San Francisco, including buildings, restaurants, bus routes, etc., are entirely factual unless otherwise stated below. For further background on Leiber’s San Francisco and its literary connections, see Herron.

p.5: Suspiria de Profundis (1847) by Thomas De Quincy (1785-1859); a series of studies on grief. Also used by Leiber in “A Bit of the Dark World” (Fantastic, February 1962). 

CHAPTER ONE

p.7, l.13f: Mount Diablo, about thirty-five miles north-east of San Francisco. As its name implies, this mountain is associated with a number of supernatural phenomena -- see Marinacci, pp.21-2.

CHAPTER TWO

p.9, l.1ff: “Franz Westen”: a thinly disguised version of Fritz Leiber himself -- see chapter XVIII in Light. There is an account of Leiber visiting the Sutro TV tower in Locus 274 (November 1983).

p.10, l.9: Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), prolific composer for recorder and other instruments. “Cal”: Calpurnia is based on Leiber’s organist friend Sheila Woodward, with whom he later visited the Sutro TV Tower-- see p.9n.

l.12: "oil portrait of…Daisy": the first of many autobiographical references to Jonquil Leiber, Fritz's wife from 1936 until her death in 1969.

l.18ff: "His gaze dropped to the studio bed...": in every detail, including the beginnings of the ‘scholar's mistress’, Franz's apartment is identical to the one in which Leiber lived at the time. -- see also p.39n. For photographs of Leiber's apartment see the front page of Locus 378 (July 1992), and Herron, p.21.

p.11, l.16: "At the beginning...": the Sutro TV Tower was erected in 1968.

p.12, l.32ff: "From this building...": the view is precisely that which Leiber could see from his apartment window. -- see also pp.39n, 159n.

p.14, l.11f: Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities: the important book; to Our Lady what the Necronomicon is to H P Lovecraft's stories.

CHAPTER THREE

p.16, l.28: The Magic Flute (1791), opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), the plot of which contains occult and Masonic undertones.

p.17, l.24: Papageno's bells help save the princess imprisoned in the palace of the High Priest of Isis and Osiris.

p.18, l.36ff: “Megapolisomancy...paramental...”: "I have had people who are into witchcraft and into theosophy take that idea of mine quite seriously, and say when did I make the discovery, and so on" (Leiber on An Hour with Fritz Leiber, quoted by Byfield, p.64). Leiber had begun to develop the idea of paramentals as far back as the early 1940s with "Smoke Ghost" (Unknown, October 1941) and "The Hound" (Weird Tales, November 1942).

p.20, l.24f: Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961), Californian poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction. The journal is reminiscent of his Black Book, a notebook kept throughout his career, and published in book form by Arkham House in 1979. Leiber visited Smith while holidaying in the San Francisco area in June 1944 (Light, p.352).

l.29f: Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-49), British writer who committed suicide, leaving Death's Jest-Book, a Jacobean-style tragedy, unfinished.

l.31: George Sterling (1869-1926), American poet and 'King of Bohemian San Francisco', who committed suicide by swallowing cyanide. At his cabin in Carmel, south of San Francisco, he held court for many of the writers and poets of his day, including Clark Ashton Smith.

l.34: "Jaime Donaldus Byers": clearly based on Donald Sidney-Fryer, American writer and Clark Ashton Smith expert; his Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography was published the year after Our Lady.

p.21, l.1: L Sprague de Camp (1907-2000), American writer of fantasy and science fiction, biographer of H P Lovecraft.

l.2: Roy Squires, American small-press publisher and Clark Ashton Smith's literary executor.

l.21: "your apartment number, 607" -- see p.39n.

p.22, l.12f: “Tiberius's exile...to the island of Rhodes”: the Roman Emperor Tiberius (42BC-AD37) was exiled to Rhodes in 6BC, and returned to Rome in 2BC.

l.27f: "Fifth Brandenburg Concerto" by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

CHAPTER FOUR

p.24, l.10f: "...between two mirrors": compare with Leiber's "Midnight in the Mirror World" (Fantastic, October 1964).

l.28: "...black tendrils...": compare with Leiber's "A Bit of the Dark World" (Fantastic, February 1962).

p.27, l.5f: "Supersubtle Venetians": “A frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian” -- Othello Act I, Scene 3, l.363.

CHAPTER FIVE

p.29, l.5f: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

l.16: "If you won't come to me...": from M R James' "A School Story" (More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1911; reprinted in MRJ, where the quote is on p. 111).

l.17f: Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), British antiquary and scholar, father of the modern ghost story as exemplified by many of Leiber's own tales.

l.19f: "The mountain came to Mohammed": in fact Mohammed went to the mountain!

CHAPTER SIX

p.30, l.21f: The Mary Celeste (not Marie) was found in 1872 between the Azores and Portugal with no crew on board. The mystery of what happened to them has never been adequately resolved. Last Year at Marienbad, film directed by Alain Resnais in 1961, based on the novel by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet.

l.23ff: "Jaime Donaldus Byers's place": the description is said by Herron (p.142) to apply to Number 69 Beaver Street.

l.24: "carpenter's Gothic": the popular term for the kind of elaborately ornamented late Victorian architecture commonly seen in San Francisco and otherwise known as "Stick-Eastlake" style.

p.32, l.10: "What face or no-face": from MR James' "Stories I Have Tried to Write" (The Touchstone, November 30th, 1929; reprinted in MRJ, where the quote is on p.361).

p.35, l.9ff: "...that epitaph Dorothy Sayers had seen...": Dorothy L Sayers (1893-1957), British writer of detective novels. Leiber has slightly misremembered her introduction to Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1st series, 1928), where she says: "I remember reading somewhere about an old sundial, around whose face was written IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK. If that motto does not give you a 'cauld grue', then nothing that I or any other person can say will convince you of its soul-shaking ghastliness." "Later Than You Think" was used by Leiber as a story title (Galaxy, October 1950). The line seems to have come originally from the poem "It is Later Than You Think" (1921), by Canadian poet Robert W Service (1874-1958): "Ah, the clock is always slow/It is later than you think."

l.12f: "seven-storey apartment house": one storey higher than the real 811 Geary -- see p. 39n.

p.36, l.19: "...waved at him": compare with the demon in M R James' "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", which is seen by a boy to "wive at me out of the winder" (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1904; reprinted in MRJ, where the quote is on p.86).

l.22ff: "Taffy was a Welshman...": the rhyme dates back at least to c. 1780, when it was recorded in Nancy Cock's Pretty Song Book. The full text can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, pp. 400-1.

CHAPTER SEVEN

p.39, l.30: "811 Geary": the apartment building where Franz lives was Leiber's own -- Leiber lived at 811 Geary Street, near the Hyde Intersection, from 1970 to 1977. The building manager Roberto Cornego is Fernando Luque in the book. Leiber also set his story "The Glove" (Whispers, June 1975) there. His apartment number was 507, which exactly corresponds to Franz's 607 on the sixth floor, since, in reality, 811 Geary was numbered on the British system.

p.42, l.11: "Calpuria": a typographical error for Calpurnia, who was Julius Caesar's wife. The title of Leiber's story "The Death of Princes" (Amazing, June 1976) is taken from a line spoken by Calpurnia in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

l.15: "Ethical Culturist": the New York Society for Ethical Culture, founded by Felix Adler in 1876. l.16: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), American writer and philosopher. Robert G Ingersoll (1833-99), American lawyer and lecturer, 'The Great Agnostic'.

l.17: "Bahai": religion founded in the 1860s by Iranian religious leader Baha’u’llah (1817-92), whose transcendent God manifested himself through Abraham, Buddha, Jesus, etc.

p.45, l.21: The World Trade Center in a future, almost-deserted New York, is the main setting for Leiber's "Black Glass" (Andromeda 3, 1978).

CHAPTER EIGHT

p.48, l.13: William James (1842-1910), American philosopher and psychologist, brother of Henry James. Felix Adler (1851-1933), founder of Ethical Culture.

CHAPTER NINE

p.55, l.5f: "Merck's Manual": Merck & Co. Inc.'s Merck's Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.

l.6: Colette, pseudonym of Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette (1873-1954), French novelist. Henry Miller (1891-1980), American author of the controversial novel Tropic of Cancer (1934).

l.7: Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), American writer of fantasy and adventure, creator of Tarzan. William S Burroughs (1914-97), American writer, especially known for accounts of life as a drug addict. l.7f: George Borrow (1803-81), British writer of The Bible in Spain (1843), Wild Wales (1862), The Zincali (1841).

l.9: "Nostig's The Subliminal Occult" -- see p. 74.

l.27: "When Anslinger got Congress to classify it...": marijuana was classified as a narcotic in 1929. In 1937, Harry J Anslinger, Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, used scare tactics of an extreme kind to persuade Congress to introduce the Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively made possession illegal.

p.56, l.28ff: "...hallucinations...": clearly autobiographical -- compare the "giant spiders' legs" with Leiber's "A Bit of the Dark World" (Fantastic, February 1962).

CHAPTER TEN

p.62, l.20: Fay Wray (1907- ), American actress, star of King Kong (1933), noted for her screaming ability.

p.63, l.18f: The Marriage of Figaro (1786), opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

p.68, l.12f: Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), American author of supernatural tales and inventor of the Cthulhu Mythos. He was a major influence on Leiber. "The Haunter of the Dark" (Weird Tales, December 1936); the quotation is on p.95 of The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House, 1985).

l.34: Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others was the first book published by Arkham House, in 1939. Leiber's own first book, Night's Black Agents, was also published by Arkham House in 1947.

l.35: M R James’ Collected Ghost Stories consists of the contents of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Others (1919) and A Warning to the Curious (1925), plus several previously uncollected pieces.

p.69, l.1f: Weird Tales, pulp magazine launched in 1923, which ran for over thirty years and published many of the greats in the field. The “lurid covers” were probably by the likes of artists
C C Senf and Margaret Brundage, and are now considered highly collectable classics.

l.12ff: "At any particular time of history...": compare with Lovecraft's "He" (Weird Tales, September 1926). l.21: Pythagoras (c.580-500BC), Greek philosopher and mathematician, who taught that all phenomena are harmonic. He is credited with the concept of the music of the spheres.

p.70, l.15: "The City of the Singing Flame" (Wonder Stories, July 1931).

p.71, l.10ff: "Tiberius...Caprian days": the Emperor Tiberius spent his last ten years (from AD27) on the island of Capri, where he built a dozen villas equipped with torture chambers, execution facilities, etc.

l.32: Salvador Dali (1904-89), Spanish surrealist artist.

p.72, l.12: "Castries...Carswell": Westen is thinking of Adolphe de Castro, the form used by Gustaf Adolf de Castro Danzinger (1859-1959), American writer and revision client of H P Lovecraft. Lovecraft wrote two stories for de Castro which appeared in Weird Tales. De Castro also collaborated with Ambrose Bierce on The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (1892), a translation of the German novel by Richard Voss. -- see also pp.104-5, 117. Karswell is the name of the black magician (possibly modelled on Aleister Crowley) in M R James' "Casting the Runes" (More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1911; reprinted in MRJ).

l.23f: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), American journalist and writer of macabre fiction such as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", who disappeared without trace while covering the civil war in Mexico. In "The Black Gondolier" (Over the Edge, ed. August Derleth, 1964), Leiber has a character suggest that Bierce vanished "in the oil lands between Mexico and Texas" because he had found out about the sentient nature of crude oil. Jack London (1876-1916), San Francisco-born writer of such classics as The Call of the Wild (1903), and The Iron Heel (1907). The official cause of his death was uremic poisoning, but some suspect he deliberately took a morphine overdose. The verdict of suicide on the death of George Sterling was regarded by some as doubtful.-- see also p.119

CHAPTER TWELVE

p.74, l.27f: "Prof. D.M. Nostig's The Subliminal Occult": not traced; probably fictional. -- see also p.173.

p.75. l.2f: "Montague's...White Tape": not traced; probably fictional. -- see also p.172

l.8f: Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade (1740-1814), French soldier and writer, after whom sadism is named. "Ames et Fantômes de Douleur": Spirits and Ghosts of Pain; not traced; probably fictional. -- see also p.171.

l.9f: Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1835-95), Austrian novelist, after whom masochism is named. "Knockenmädchen in Pelze mit Peitsche": Skeleton Girls in Furs with Whips; not traced; probably fictional. -- see also p.172

l.10f: Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer; De Profundis (1905) reflects on his experiences.

l.14f: "The Mauritzius (sic) Case by Jacob Wasserman (sic)": Jacob Wassermann (1873-1934), German Jewish writer, perhaps most well known for Caspar Hauser (1908; trans. 1928). The Maurizius Case (Der Fall Maurizius, 1928; trans. 1929), part of the Kerkhoven trilogy, is widely considered his masterpiece. Apparently it was Leiber's friend Harry Fischer (Gray Mouser to Leiber's Fafhrd) who introduced him to this book (Light, p.343). -- see also p.173n.

l.15f: Journey to the End of Night (trans. 1934) by Celine, pseudonym of Louis F Destouches.

l.16f: "Bonewits' periodical Gnostica": Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits, the first person to be granted a degree in magic from the University of California (1970). Briefly in the early seventies he edited Gnostica: News of the Aquarian Frontier (Llewellyn Publications), which he described as “the Scientific American of Astrology, Magick, Witchcraft, Neopaganism and the Occult”. The magazine continued under other editors, but is no longer current, although Llewellyn still flourishes in New Age circles. -- see also p.135.

l.17f: "The Spider Glyph in Time by Mauricio Santos-Lobos": not traced; probably fictional. -- see also p.171

l.18f: "Sex, Death and Supernatural Dread by Ms Frances D. Lettland, Ph.B": not traced; probably fictional. -- see also pp.170-1.

p.76, l.1f: In Greek and Roman legend, the Three Fates -- Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos -- controlled the birth, life and death of everyone. The Three Furies -- Tisiphone, Alecto and Megaera -- were goddesses of vengeance.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

p.77, l.10: "touched with the White Goddess": The White Goddess (1948), by British writer Robert Graves (1895-1985), put forward the theory that true poets receive their gift from the "White Goddess", a muse of the feminine principle who is both inspirational and potentially fatal.

l.16f: "Ormadz...Ahriman": opposites of light and dark in Zoroastrianism.

p.78, l.3f: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Polish astronomer, noted for his heliocentric theory of the universe.

l.4: Isaac Newton (1642-1727), British physicist and mathematician.

l.6: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist.

l.31ff: "stout Cortez...": lines from John Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

p.81, l.30: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), most famous of all American writers of horror fiction and poetry.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

p.86, l.21ff: "Several of the rock surfaces...had been scrawled on...": these odd graffiti were not invented by Leiber but did actually exist at the time.

l.28: "yoni...lingam": Hindu symbols for the female and male genitals.

p.87, l.4f: Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), British writer and occultist. The lettering incident took place in New York in the summer of 1918.

l.10ff: "The Whisperer in Darkness" (Weird Tales, August 1931); "The Dunwich Horror" (Weird Tales, April 1929); "At the Mountains of Madness" (Astounding Stories, February, March, April 1936).

l.13: "A Bit of the Dark World" (Fantastic, February 1962).

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

p.89, l.12f: "sea of roofs...stalking him": compare with Leiber's "Smoke Ghost" (Unknown, October 1941).

p.93, l.8: Vincent Price (1911-93), cultured American actor who came to specialise in horror films.

l.13ff: "neatly bearded...": see the photograph of Donald Sidney-Fryer on the back of his Songs and Sonnets Atlantean (Arkham House, 1971)

l.34: Edmund Spenser (1552?-99), English poet and author of The Faerie Queene.

p.94, l.24ff: Peter Viereck (1916- ), American poet.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

p.96, l.33: Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71), Florentine goldsmith and sculptor.

l.35f: "Fa Lo Suee (the Daughter of Fu Manchu...)": Fu Manchu, an oriental genius who plans to conquer the world in a series of novels (some filmed) by Sax Rohmer, (pseudonym of British writer Arthur Sarsfield Ward (1883-1959). "Fa Lo Suee" is actually spelt "Fah Lo Suee in the books.

p.97, l.9: "Shasta's mystic top": Mount Shasta in northern California. "No place in North America is the subject of as many occult legends and stories," says Marinacci (pp.53-7), going on to list "white phantoms", "Lizard People", lost cities of Lemurians, and an appearance by the Count St Germain.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

p.100, l.22f: "George Ricker": named for Dennis Rickard, active fan of supernatural fiction and friend of Leiber.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

p.101, l.28: Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), American inventor.

p.102, l.1: Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924), American architect and pioneer of skyscraper design.

l.2: Marie Curie (1867-1934), French scientist; discoverer of radium.

l.3: Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), Italian inventor of radio telegraphy.

l.3f: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91), founder of modern occultism; her Theosophical Society was supposedly based on the channelled teachings of Tibetan Secret Masters.

l.5f: Annie Besant (1847-1933), British Theosophist who took over the helm of the Theosophical Society on the death of Madame Blavatsky.

l.6: Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900), author of Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864) and other books on pyramidology; inventor of the 'pyramid inch'.

l.9: Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), American founder of the Christian Science movement, who resorted to litigation on several occasions when she believed that her followers were using powers of mental suggestion for evil ends.

l.11: Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British philosopher.

l.12: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian inventor of psychoanalysis. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist: his theories were an important influence on Leiber's life and writing.

l.14ff: The Paris Exhibition (Centennial Exposition) and the World's Columbian Exposition were held in 1889 and 1893 respectively.

l.17: Construction on the New York subways began in 1900; the first stretch was opened in 1904.

l.17ff: The Boer War in South Africa was fought between 1899 and 1902.

l.19f: The Boxer Rebellion in China was a rising against foreigners led by a branch of the White Lotus sect in 1900.

l.21f: The first Zeppelin was launched on 2 July 1900.

l.22f: Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight was on 17 December 1903.

l.26: Herman Melville (1819-91), American author of Moby Dick (1851).

p.103, l.6f: Franco-Prussian War (1870-1); Paris surrendered to the Prussians in January 1871.

l.16: Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-82), Italian patriot, conquered Sicily and Naples in 1860.

l.17: The Carbonari were a revolutionary republican group in nineteenth century Naples.

p.104, l.16f: Jean Champollion (1790-1832), French archaeologist. The decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, on which are inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek, provided the key to the hitherto untranslatable hieroglyphs.

l.25: “Nyarlathotep” (The United Amateur, November 1920; reprinted in H P Lovecraft, Miscellaneous Writings, ed. S T Joshi, Arkham House 1995), a story based on a dream.

p.105, l.2: “‘an amiable charlatan’ and ‘an unctuous old hypocrite’”: both descriptions are taken from H P Lovecraft's letters (1936 and 1928 respectively), quoted in L Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), pp.423 and 295 in the New English Library edition (1976). -- see also p.72n.

l.15: Frederic Francois Chopin (1810-49), Polish composer and pianist.

l.34: "fellahin": the Egyptian peasantry.

p.106, l.8: Anton La Vey, founder of the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966, and author of The Satanic Bible (1969).

l.16: The Bohemian Club (624 Taylor Street) was founded in 1872 and became the fashionable place for the literati and businessmen to meet. Among its other members were Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte.

l.17f: Earl Rogers (1870-1922), Clarence Darrow (1857-1938); two of the best known American lawyers. Before Darrow reached the peak of his career with cases such as that of Loeb & Leopold, he was defended by Rogers on a charge of jury bribery.

l.19f: Ambrose Bierce -- see p.72n. Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (1906) is a bitter and witty satirical dictionary.

l.21: Nora May French (1881-1907), poet and member of the Carmel Bohemian set. Her Poems was published in 1910, three years after her suicide at George Sterling's home. -- see also p.119.

l.22: "Charmion (sic) London": Charmian Kittredge, Jack London's second wife, whom he married in 1905. l.22f: Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948), San Franciscan author who wrote some weird tales, influenced by Henry James.

l.28: "Munchausen anecdotes": Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Munchausen (1720-97), noted for his extraordinarily tall travellers' tales.

p.107, l.19: Jean Paul Marat (1743-93), French Revolutionary politician, murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday.

p.108, l.26: “SM”: sado-masochism.

l.32ff: Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), legendary dancer, born in San Francisco, where a street is named after her. Eleanora Duse (1861-1924), Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), Marlene Dietrich (1904-92), Arletty (Arlette-Leonie Bathiat, 1898-1992): all actresses.

p.109, l.16f: "the cool, grey city of love": the title of a poem by George Sterling (in Sails and Mirage and Other Poems, 1921) -- see p.20n. Today it is a commonly used appellation for San Francisco. Lines from the poem appear on a plaque erected in 1982 in George Sterling Glade on Russian Hill.

CHAPTER TWENTY

p.110, l.13: "Hermitic (sic) Order of the Golden Dawn": the group of occultists called the Hermetic (i.e. magical, not "Hermitic") Order of the Golden Dawn was formed in 1887 as an offshoot of the Rosicrucian Society in England.

l.14: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, who was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1887 and resigned in 1905.

l.15f: Dion Fortune, pseudonym of Violet Mary Firth (1890-1946), British occultist and writer who later formed her own occult group, the Fraternity of the Inner Light.

l.16: George Russell (1867-1935), Irish poet, who wrote under the Gnostic pseudonym “AE”.

l.17f: Arthur Machen (1863-1947), Welsh writer of weird tales, who resigned from the Golden Dawn along with Yeats in 1905. His novella The Great God Pan was published in 1894.

l.20ff: "Diana Vaughan...a hoax perpetrated by...Gabriel Jogand": Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès (1854-1907), prolific French journalist; "Miss Diana Vaughan" was a pseudonym under which he wrote her fictional memoirs, Mémoires d'une ex-palladiste, parfaite initiée, indépendante (1895).

p.111, l.6: “pietra dura”: inlaid work with hard stones.

l.23: "Nihilists": a terrorist movement in tsarist Russia dedicated to the rejection and overthrow of society.

p.112, l.6: Nicola Tesla (1856-1943), American electrical scientist and inventor, born in modern-day Croatia.

l.8: Tesla's "device": also mentioned by Leiber in "The Ghost Light" (The Ghost Light, 1984), which centres on a similar object.

p.113, l.2: The Eiffel Tower was built for the Paris Centennial Exposition in 1889.

l.22: Archimedes (c.287-212BC), Greek mathematician.

l.34: The Hobart Building was designed by Willis Polk and built in 1914, which makes it a little too recent to be the object of de Castries' plans c.1905.

p.114, l.5: Mammy Pleasant wielded great power and became rich in San Francisco in the latter half of the nineteenth century; she was "a blackmailer, a soothsayer, an abortionist and a procurer", whose "voodoo rituals" were thinly disguised orgies. She is said to haunt the site of her house, on Bush and Octavia. See Marinacci, pp.39-40.

l.7f: Lotta's Fountain, a decorated iron pillar, was given to the city of San Francisco in 1875 by Lotta Crabtree, whose career started at the age of eight, and whose guileless singing, dancing, acting and banjo-playing made her a millionairess by the time she retired thirty-five years later. The Fountain is at the intersection of four streets: Market, Kearny, Geary and Third. For a photograph see Herron, p.14.

l.9f: Lola Montez (Marie Gilbert, 1818-61), Irish dancer and adventuress, famous for her liaison with King Ludwig I of Bavaria (1786-1868). Her exotic "spider dance" was the talk of San Francisco and involved artificial arachnids made from rubber, cork and whalebone.

p.116, l.2: Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), President of the United States 1901-9.

l.5: In Greek legend, Andromeda was chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster, but was rescued by Perseus.

l.14f: The Iron Heel, first published in 1907.

p.117, l.2ff: “De Castro...Bierce...” -- see p.72n.

p.118, l.20: John Brown (1800-59), fanatical anti-slavery fighter whose actions helped trigger the American Civil War.

l.21: Samuel Adams (1722-1803), instigator of the 'Boston Tea Party' in 1773.

p.119, l.4: Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-98), author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, whose hobby was photographing little girls, sometimes naked.

l.20: "suicidal drive": Herron (p.54) calls this “a suicide march among the California Romantics”, listing French, Sterling, and London, plus Carrie Sterling, Herman Scheffauer, and Una Waldrop. -- see also pp.72n, 106n.

l.31f: "Rogers's daughter": the daughter of Earl Rogers was the famous newspaperwoman, Adela Rogers St Johns. -- see also p.106n.

p.120, l.8ff: "Noseless One": see London's "alcoholic memoirs", John Barleycorn (1913), chapter 36.

l.35: The Star Rover (UK title The Jacket), first published in 1915; a novel influenced by Clark Ashton Smith's The Star-Treader and Other Poems (1912).

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

p.123, l.25: "Thrasyllus-secrets": Thrasyllus was Tiberius' personal fortune-teller and sorcerer. -- see p.22.

l.27: Caligula succeeded Tiberius as Roman Emperor in AD37, and ruled until AD41. He was noted for his excessive cruelty.

p.124, l.8f: "Art, like the bartender...": quotation from a poem by Peter Viereck -- see p.94.

1.23f: "Upon their vestments...": "They have on their raiment a writing which no man knoweth" -- the conflation of two Biblical verses which appears on the scroll of St John in the stained glass window in M R James' "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1904; reprinted in MRJ, where the quote is on p.93).

p.125, l.29ff: "the old man...Salem witchcraft trial of 1692": Giles Corey, aged over eighty, was pressed to death in Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1692 witch-hunt. Strictly speaking, he was not killed for "refusing to testify" as Leiber puts it, but for refusing to plead to the indictment against him.

p.129, l.6ff:  Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), American writer of crime thriller masterpieces including The Maltese Falcon (1930); another of his books, The Dain Curse (1929), features an apartment building very like the one in Our Lady.

l.15: The Knights Hospitallers were formed in Jerusalem c.1048 to provide lodging and food for pilgrims to the Holy Land. They were based in Rhodes from 1310.

l.34f: "a sentence in a Federal prison...": in 1951 Hammett served six months in jail rather than give the names of the contributors to the bail bond fund of the Civil Rights Congress, with which he was involved.

p.130, l.10: The Stock Market crash took place in the second half of October, 1929.

p.131, l.36: "The Gold Bug" (1845?), reprinted in Tales of Mystery and Imagination; on p.98 there are references to the "bishop's castle" and the "devil's seat".

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

p.132, l.10f: Gustave Doré (1833-83), French illustrator whose edition of Dante's Inferno was published in 1861. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet; the Inferno is part of his Divine Comedy.

p.135, l.13: Charles Manson's 'Family' were responsible for the Sharon Tate murders in Hollywood in 1969.

l.14: "Zodiac Killer": the murderer of at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area during 1968-70. The Zodiac Killer, who was never caught, was given the name because of the coded messages he sent to newspapers, signed with a symbol of the zodiac.

l.14f: “Meleta Denning in Gnostica”: for Bonewits' Gnostica -- see p.75n. Denning has appeared in Gnostica and other Llewellyn publications on several occasions, but it has not been possible to find specific details of her writings on kappa phenomena.

l.36: "Anima...Shadow": archetypes in Jungian psychology. Byfield (p.65) argues that Daisy, the Sutro Tower, the Scholar's Mistress, and Calpurnia are the four Animas in Franz's life; the first three representing his Anima-Shadow.

p.136, l.16ff: "A View from a Hill" (London Mercury, May 1925; reprinted in A Warning to the Curious, 1925; and MRJ, where the breaking of the binoculars occurs on p.313).

p.138, l.15: Nayland Smith, the hero of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

p.143, l.13ff: Sir Francis Drake (c.1540/3-1596) circumnavigated the world in the Golden Hind, making landfall north of San Francisco in 1579 to carry out repairs.

l.24f: "Pandora woes": in Greek legend Pandora opened a box releasing all the world's evils.

p.148, l.34: Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816), Italian composer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

p.154, l.14f: "Sears Roebuck's great rival": Montgomery Ward's, the other (and older) of the two main US mail order companies.

l.17f: "Monkey Block": among the people who rented space in the Montgomery Block, which began life as San Francisco's first major office building (1853), were several hundred writers and artists, including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte, as well as George Sterling. The building was demolished in 1959.

l.29: "...straight line..." -- see p.159n.

p.155, l.17ff: "TV tower...Transamerica Pyramid": the 853-foot-high Transamerica Pyramid, at 600 Montgomery Street, was designed by William Pereira and erected in 1972. The Sutro Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid both also feature in relation to strange events in Leiber's "The Button Molder" (Whispers, October 1979).

p.156, l.15ff: "a brass plaque at Bush and Stockton...": for a photograph of the plaque, which was installed in February 1974, see Herron, p.37. Miles Archer was Sam Spade's partner in The Maltese Falcon; his death occurs at the start of the book. Leiber wrote the first ever article to survey the Maltese Falcon sites: "Stalking Sam Spade" in California Living, the magazine supplement of the San Francisco Chronicle, January 13th, 1974.

p.157, l.9: "the Rhodes Hotel": Leiber has not strayed very far from the facts here, for at one point in its history 811 Geary was the Rhodena Hotel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

p.159, l.12: "...the fulcrum (O) of the curse": a line drawn from the Transamerica Pyramid to the Sutro TV Tower on Palo Alto Avenue, Mount Sutro, passes through the centre of Corona Heights, but crosses Geary Street on the 500 block rather than at 811. Although Leiber/Westen could see Corona Heights and the TV Tower from his window at the back of 811 Geary -- the view being exactly as described in Our Lady -- the apartment would not have been on the same line as the Transamerica Pyramid. This is a rare example of Leiber improving on reality for the sake of his story. Strangely enough, fact eventually aped fiction when Leiber moved to 565 Geary in 1977, where "The Button Molder" (Whispers, October 1979) is set.

p.160, l.7: "Grimpen Marsh": Grimpen Mire, the haunt of the Hound of the Baskervilles in Arthur Conan Doyle's tale.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

p.165, l.30: "Rhine cards": a set of symbols on cards, devised by J B and Louisa E Rhine in the late 1920’s for testing extra-sensory perception.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

p.169, l.28: "psychologist F.C. MacKnight": presumably Franklin MacKnight, Leiber's old college friend at the University of Chicago. Like Leiber, MacKnight majored in psychology. They shared an interest in chess, and it was MacKnight who first introduced Leiber to H P Lovecraft’s fiction (Light, p.282).

p.170, l.24: "The Thing on the Doorstep" (Weird Tales, January 1937); the ending appears on p.302 of The Dunwich Horror and Others (1985).

l.30: "The Disinterment of Venus" (Weird Tales, July 1934).

l.33: “Ms Lettland's monumental book": Frances D Lettland's Sex, Death and Supernatural Dread; not traced; like the author, probably fictional -- see p.75.

p.171, l.4: "James's ghost stories": Collected Ghost Stories of M R James (1931 etc) -- see p.68n.

l.18: "The Spider Glyph in Time": by Mauricio Santos-Lobos; not traced -- see p.75.

l.29ff: "Knochenmädchen in Pelze (Mit Peitsche)...Ames et Fantômes de Douler...": not traced -- see p.75n.

p.172, l.9f: "Montague...White Tape": not traced -- see p.75.

l.14: "The Colour Out of Space" (Amazing Stories, September 1927).

l.25: Suspiria de Profundis -- see p.5n.

l.26f: De Profundis -- see p.75n. Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), British poet who had a disastrous relationship with Oscar Wilde.