The Street - H P Lovecraft

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The street by H. P. Lovecraft. There will be those
who say that things in 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 honor fashion that street, good valiant men
of our blood, who had come from the blessed isles

(00:20):
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 of the forest. For many Indians lurked there

(00:42):
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 brave 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

(01:02):
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,

(01:27):
and thereafter no more Indians troubled the street. The men,
busy with labor, waxed, prosperous and as happy as they
knew how to be, And the children grew up comfortable.
And more families came from the motherland to dwell on
the street, and the children's children and the newcomer's children
grew up. The town was now a city, and one

(01:48):
by one the cabins gave place to houses, simple beautiful
houses of brick and wood, with stone steps and iron
railings and fan lights over the doors. No flimsy creations
were these houses, for they were made to serve many
a generation. Within these were carved mantles and graceful stairs,
and sensible, pleasing furniture, china and silver brought from the motherland.

(02:12):
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 honor, taste and
learning now about as well. Books and paintings and music
came to the houses, and the young men who went
to the university, which rose above the plain to the north.

(02:33):
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 rubbled 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

(02:55):
was all soft for dew and twittering bird song. And
behind the houses were walled rose gardens with hedged paths
and sun dials, where at evening the moon and stars
would shine bewitchingly, while fragrant blossoms glistened with dew. So
the street dreamed on, passed wars, calamities, and change. Once

(03:15):
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 batter of stripes and stars.
But though the 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

(03:37):
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
seen the inhabitants with their walking sticks, tall beavers and
cropped heads. New sounds came from the distance, for strange
puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and

(03:59):
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

(04:19):
up tall posts bearing weird lines. 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

(04:43):
with the wise, just spirit of the street, so that
the street pined silently as its houses fell into decay,
and its trees dried one by one, and its rose
gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But it felt
a stir of pride one day when again marsh forth
young men, some of whom never came back. These young

(05:04):
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.

(05:27):
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 spirits slept. Great excitement once came to the street.

(05:52):
War and revolution were raging across the seas. A dynasty
had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects were flocking with dubious
intent into 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 Motherland in her titanic

(06:13):
struggle for civilization. Over the cities once more floated the
old flag, companioned by a new flag and by a
plainer yet glorious tricolor. But not many flags floated over
the street, for their ain brooded only fear and hatred
and ignorance. Again, young men went forth, but not quite
as did the young men in those other days. Something

(06:36):
was lacking, And the sons of those young men in
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 fear and hatred

(06:59):
and ignorant still brood over the street, for many had
stayed behind, and many strangers had come from distant places
to the ancient houses, And the young men who had
returned dwelt there no longer Swarthian sinister were most of
the strangers. Yet among them one might find a few
faces like those who fashioned the street and molded its spirit.

(07:22):
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

(07:45):
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 an apported
dam 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

(08:08):
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. Their 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

(08:29):
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, would try to picture
them in their vanished glory. Yet of such travelers and
poets there were not many. The rumor now spread widely
that these houses contained the leaders of a vast band

(08:50):
of terrorists, who, on a designated day were to launch
an orgy of slaughter for the extermination of America and
for 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

(09:12):
that our fathers had exalted to stamp out the soul
of the old America, the soul that was once bequeathed
through one thousand and a half years of Anglo saxon freedom, justice,
and moderation. It was said that the swarthy men who
dwelt in the street and congregated in its rotting edifices
were the brains of a hideous revolution, and that their

(09:32):
word of command, many millions of brainless, besotted beasts would
stretch forth with their noisome talons from the slums of
a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying, until the land
of our father 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

(09:54):
hidden much. Yet could nothing be found to place the guilt.
None could tell just whose arrest my cut off the
damnable plotting in 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 the men in olive draft

(10:14):
came bearing muskets, till it seemed as if, in its
sad sleep the street must have some haunting dreams of
those other days when musket bearing men in conical hats
walked along it from the woodland spring to the cluster
of houses by the beach. Yet no act be performed
to check the impending cataclysm, for the swarthy sinister men
were old and cunning, so the street slept uneasily on

(10:39):
till one night there gathered in Petrovitch's Bakery and the
Riffkin School of Modern Economics, in the Circle Social Club,
in the 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,

(11:00):
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, nor
what they ought to do, for the swarthy 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

(11:21):
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 of surprise, because of its
very queer uniformity. It was indeed an exceedingly singular happening,

(11:46):
though after all a simple one. For without warning, in
one of the small hours beyond minn all of 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.

(12:08):
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 where he
could describe moonlight and fair houses, and elms and oaks

(12:29):
and maples of dignity, And the traveler declares that, instead
of the places, won't it 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 may be those who say that things in places
have souls, and there be those who say they have not.

(12:50):
I dare say myself, but I have told you of
the street. The End of the Street by H. P.
Lovecraft